Entegral Blog

In 2021 Entegral participated and voiced its concerns at the Online Intermediation Platforms market Inquiry (OIPMI). South Africa’s Competition Commission (CC) has now published a comprehensive report outlining provisional findings and recommendations of its Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry. It’s open for discussion with the final report to be published in November 2022. You can find the detailed reports here . Entegral welcomes the findings of the Competition Commission related to the online property portal space. You can read this comprehensive blog post from Entegral founder , Adriaan Grove' for more details.  We are looking forward to contributing further and the final report to be released in November 2022.

We are excited to announce another Entegral partner portal, Property House (www.propertyhouse.co.za)  for our South African real estate clients.  Property House is a free portal and can easily be activated in Base or integrated via our Sync API if you use your own management system. About Entegral's listing syndication platform Entegral provides the largest independent listing syndication platform operating in South Africa and Namibia, updating thousands of for sale, rental, and auction listings to a wide range of  property portals  on a daily basis.  Visit our website at  www.entegral.net  to explore our platforms.

In February this year , the Competition Commission of South Africa launched its “Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry (OIPMI)” . The Commission published a draft for public comment outlining its plan to investigate these markets and stating that “the Commission has reason to believe that there exist market features which impede, distort or restrict competition amongst the platforms themselves, and which undermine the purposes of the [Competition] Act.” While it encompasses companies like Takealot, Uber Eats, and Airbnb, it also started an investigation into  property portals and listing syndication providers . Which caught the attention of Entegral as we know that: High portal prices are a big problem for many of our real estate clients. Are they justified, and do they deliver value for agents? Some platform market features hinder fair competition between portals, service providers, and innovative new real estate models; Competition amongst platforms is fierce, and...

We are pleased to announce a new Sync listing syndication partner , Commercial People . South African estate agents can advertise all their commercial for sale and rental properties on this international portal at no additional fee.  The portal is available to Base users as well as real estate agencies making use of our Sync API . Simply speak to our helpdesk to activate. Entegral's Sync syndication platform automates the publication and tracking of property listings on a wide range of local and international portals.

A new Sync listing syndication partner portal has been launched: Residential People . Residential People is an international portal that was established in 2014. It is free to list and can be activated by the Entegral team for your Base account or direct through your Sync API. They operate in South Africa, UAE, Bangladesh, UK, India, Nigeria and  Pakistan. The feed is available should you have listings in these countries. Entegral's Sync portal listing syndication platform was launched in 2016 and has grown to be the most trusted syndication platform for estate agents in South Africa, Namibia and neighbouring countries. It simplifies online marketing by allowing you to list once and advertise on multiple portals. It is integrated into the Base CRM system and offers seamless integration into your own management system via the Sync API . 

We've updated systems including Base, OMS, Sync, Flex and Portals to reflect the 14 correct Namibia regions  as per the following region map. Towns were subsequently moved to reflect the correct areas. Flex websites are in the process of updating to reflect the correct region per listing.

Property Matcher has announced that they are moving to a free-to-list portal. If you are using Base, OMS, or Sync you can now advertise for free on South Africa's Property Matcher . Simply  contact our support team  to enable your feed on either the OMS or  Base .  Check out the list of  free and paid property portals we offer to all clients here . Sync API clients For clients using our standalone  Sync API listing syndication interface  with their own management systems, simply add 'propertymatcher' to your portalListing object for each listing as per the  Sync API documentation here  after you've enabled the portal for an office under the  Save Portal Credentials .

We are pleased to announce a new Sync listing syndication interface with HouseFinder Magazine Namibia . The interface allows Entegral clients who are using our Base or Sync systems to automatically update their listings to the HouseFinder website every 24 hours.  A setup fee of NS $499 is payable to Entegral for activation while a fee of N$ 99/month per 50 listings is applicable if you are not already paying this for your feed to external portals (Property24 Namibia).  Click here for more information on HouseFinder . To activate your feed please contact our team on  support@entegral.net  and allow +- 1 business day for your feed to be activated. If you are using our Sync API, the portal is also available for interface,  see API documentation here . Special offer from HouseFinder Namibia HouseFinder Namibia is willing to to give their clients who wish to open their portals per above notice a FREE Quarter page advert in their magazine (value N$ 1,000.00) in th...

All Entegral clients (including those on Base, OMS and using our Sync interface) will now have their property videos automatically published on Gumtree's property section . Videos drive a much higher engagement with buyers, so we are excited this extra exposure will bring to our real estate clients. You can see a sample integration here . Gumtree recently altered their model and now allows Entegral clients to publish their listings for free. If you haven't yet enabled your free Gumtree feed, contact our team to enable you.

Looking for a rental platform to boost your rental listings? We're excited to welcome Flow as a new rental portal available for syndication for Entegral Base , OMS and Sync clients. Flow is focused exclusively on rentals where agencies are able to package their listings with deals that attract better tenants. Flow uses its unique tech to send pre-screened tenants to your property listings, resulting in higher quality applications that help to fill your vacancies. To find out more about the new Flow rental portal click here . Once you are ready to enable Flow, simply contact our support team to enable it for you. You can view other partner portals here  - list once, capture everywhere.

In keeping with its commitment to help rebuild the property industry and to bring about a lasting change, Gumtree is offering an option to upload all your listings via Entegral for free  from 1 June onwards! The functionality for this is already set up and by simply contacting your account manager you can get your listings feeding through today! From 1 June 2020 , Entegral clients will be able to automatically feed all their listings to Gumtree for free   – adding massive additional exposure without adding budget pressure! Gumtree South Africa is committed to helping rebuild the country’s property industry. While the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically suppressed activity and the ability to trade, you can significantly boost your leads ahead of a return to trading conditions. Whether your listings are Sales, Rentals, Residential, Commercial, or a combination of these, you have nothing to lose and over 1m monthly property visitors to gain! (An optional extra to automatically...

Kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, security and garden  extra description fields in Base are now pushed through to Property24 South Africa and Namibia . Simply add these fields under the extra tab on listings and complete the descriptions. Press save and the updates will be pushed through to Property24. You can also create your own additional fields by going to settings / customise. These fields are already available in the Sync API system for external management systems using Entegral's listing syndication system. You can add tags to extra fields to further customise your listing data capture , and even make these tags searchable in your Flex responsive real estate website .

Dear Clients, There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic is putting a damper on economic activity and have now resulted in a national lockdown in South Africa to help save lives. This will undoubtedly have a direct impact on the real estate market and agents specifically. Business as usual has been disrupted and working from home is the new normal for everyone in the next few weeks. At Entegral business operations continue as normal. We've been operating a remote work force for the past 5 years so there is no disruption in our service to you. Our team is actively busy working on new features and tweaking existing systems as usual. Recently, our South African partner portals have stepped up to assist agents as follows: Property24 will not charge for services for the month of April; Private Property will reduced subscription fees by 25% for 3 months; Property360 has recently partnered with Entegral to offer a reduced subscription fee for a new account; Although Entegr...

We are excited to announce an exclusive deal with national property portal Property360  (former IOLProperty) for Entegral clients. If you are NOT already advertising on Property360 you can now signup directly via Entegral and enjoy an R100/month discount on your subscription: Subscription fee reduced to R495/month ex VAT and is a month-to-month contract. There are no setup fees. Sign up directly with Entegral and we'll add the subscription to your monthly invoice. Entegral and Property360 will setup and link your account in Base , OMS or Sync  within 2 working days All your property listings, sales and rentals, will automatically be syndicated to Property360. You receive agency branding (logo) on each listing. Unlimited uploads of videos (youtube URL's) and unlimited access to the Property360 showhouse facility. Allocation of x2 featured listing per month. No charge for leads, a simple fixed monthly fee. Month-to-month contract with one month notice required for ca...

If you are using Base , OMS or Sync , we have now increased the number of listing photos exported to Property24 from 30 to 50. Our team will monitor the feed for any issues.

Entegral is now making it easier and more cost effective to launch any type of real estate portal, anywhere in the world, using our new  portal-as-a-service platform .  The service provides a quicker way to get a new portal to market with a highly optimized, tried and tested platform. It removes the complexities and therefor the risk normally associated with setting up a new real estate portal under a predictable cost structure. The solution is perfect for: Real estate organisations like MLS's who'd like to launch a local portal with their members. Smaller real estate groups who'd like to establish a hyperlocal presence in a particular region. Larger franchise groups looking to roll out a national or international brands. Entrepeneurs looking to launch a real estate portal and associated services in their own country. The costs benefits can be quite significant compared to developing your own portal from scratch while providing cutting edge features by default...

Last year we introduced our new MyProperty South Africa property portal , that runs on our Flex Template Language real estate platform . FlexTL is a unique serverless real estate platform that allows for the rapid development of real estate websites of any size, and even allows you to use your own developers. Since the launch we've been hard at work with some fine tuning, brain storming new functionality and coding enhancements for incremental roll-outs this year. Today we've updated the home page which aims to highlight some key features: The integrated Google search is kept. It allows you to type in any location in South Africa, and the system will search for properties in a radius around that point, allowing buyers to find more listings in the same area.  A neighborhood feature highlights selected areas and gives insight into popular areas in South Africa including photos, map, latest listings and agents. This is already the largest selection of neighborhood info ...

We now update the Matterport 3D tour to Property24 if supplied via OMS or Base : If you have existing listings with Matterport 3D tours on them, simply resave.

We are doing a bit of research, here is your chance to cast your vote on a general estate agent property portal survey . Open to all registered South African estate agents - the survey closes on Thursday 22 November. Click here to complete the quick survey . 

Property portals seem to have perfected the art of creating a lot more buyers than what there currently are in the market. Thousands of leads can be generated to a single agency in a month, but judging by some agency’s lead reports, and social media comments, very few actually result in sales. Estate agents are frustrated. What gives? Entegral's founder, Adriaan Grove gives his opinion on this, lead fatigue, the law of diminishing returns and Zillow's move as portal concierge service. Read more here .