IHPC REBRANDS TO SAPROPERTY.COM TO POSITION ITSELF BETTER IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA

The directors of estate agency IHPC have decided to take a huge step in positioning the company to deal with demand from international clientele better and move ahead with targeting the whole of South Africa, instead of the niche areas they have been dealing with thus far.  As of this month (April 2017), they will be known as SAProperty.com, which, says managing director Michael Bauer, is as straightforward as one can be in deciding a name for a real estate company. 

“This says what we do and where we do it,” he said, “and clients will immediately know what we’re about. Up to now, we have had a large percentage of our clientele come from Europe as well as other foreign countries, and have had great success rates both in the rental and sales divisions of our company in certain areas of the Cape and Gauteng.”

While the company name might be changing, it remains German owned and managed, and the ethos and philosophy will remain the same, said Bauer.  “We are a “young” company that promotes “out of the box” thinking and those who are driven to succeed in the areas they know and would like to work in will be given every opportunity to do so.” 

The company’s recent sales figures show that a large percentage of their sales and long term lets are to foreigners and in some areas, Blouberg and the City Bowl for one, a very high percentage of cash buyers (over 50%) has become prevalent.  With some foreign buyers and tenants, said Bauer, once they know what area they’d like to be in they are very likely to make a decision quickly. A recent case illustrates this perfectly, where an Italian person found a property he liked on going through photographs sent to him and signed and paid for a year’s rental upfront without physically seeing the property.  This has also been known to happen with sales, and it’s not unprecedented for a buyer to bid over the asking amount in cases where they really want a property, said Bauer. 

Recent clientele includes buyers and tenants from Portugal, Italy, the USA, the UK, Germany and from other parts of Europe and Africa. 

“With buyer and tenant profiles such as these it makes sense for us to expand our range of properties available to them, which would mean broadening the net of areas from which to choose as well,” said Bauer.