Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa November 2015 | Page 14

MASTER INVESTOR
service virtually for free means there is no margin,
and making any surplus to fund growth was tough.
Looking back on that time, Clarke says, “The fall
back for us was to get closer to the transaction, and
what no one knows is that a few deals helped us keep
the doors open.“ We bought a 100+ unit block of flats,
Boschendal, in the West Rand, opened the sectional
title register and resold then prior to transfer making
a comfortable profit. It sounds dumb now but we had
become estate agents working for free and that does
not balance the books” Clarke adds.
There have been other property transactions that
have helped keep Private property well funded. Some
of the founders bought a commercial building in
Kent Avenue, Randburg where Private Property was
based. The building was vacant and was acquired for
less than R4 million. It was a fairly well built modern
building with all the correct fundamentals. The
building was sold for not more than two years later
for around R11 million with almost full occupancy.
From mid 2008 Privateproperty changed from a
private seller website and opened to estate agents. It
is now South Africa’s busiest property website with
more than 1 million unique visitors, or 3 million
visits a month and over 230 000 properties for sale
and to let.
Continental Expansions
Since 2012, the company has expanded across Africa
and has become Africa’s largest online classifieds
group, focusing on Jobs, Cars, Property and Travel,
with central offices in South Africa, Kenya and
Nigeria and satellite offices in, Ghana, Tanzania,
Mauritius and Uganda. Serving markets with over
500 million Africans, the company, now called “One
Africa Media” (www.oneafricamedia.com) operates
in the world’s fastest growing economies where
connecting buyers, sellers, employers and jobseekers
adds significant value to people’s lives.
A significant portion of OAM growth was funded
by Tiger Global Management, the New Yorkbased venture capital fund, and the multinational
listed Australian recruitment company SEEK. It
is purported that they have jointly invested in the
region of $60 million USD in One Africa Media
Justin expects OAM to grow into a $1bn company
within the next five years.. “ We operate at a very
fast pace and the Internet space is evolving really
fast across our continent, so nothing is certain.