PropertyPro expands to more African territories including Zimbabwe

PropertyPro is a Nigerian-founded startup that offers a property portal with the aim to meet the needs of people searching for real-estate services/products. The company recently announced that they are expanding to begin operations in Kenya and Zimbabwe.

Now given that PropertyPro is no small entity – with over 600 000 property listings in Nigeria along with acquisitions of other real estate company’s (ToLet and Jumia House)- we were quite intrigued to hear of their entry into the local real estate market.

We asked PropertyPro what it is they are seeing in Zimbabwe that makes them want to be part of this market. PropertyPro reps said they see Zimbabwe as a market with high viability and an opportunity for growth;

Our goal at Property Pro is to establish a solid presence and operate at maximum level in every viable market in Africa. Despite the internet penetration into Real Estate in Zimbabwe, we found a room for growth, for property developers, Agents to sell, connect to users hunting for properties easily.

Besides Nigeria, PropertyPro is now present in Kenya and Zim as aforementioned and beyond these, they are also going to set up shop in Uganda and 5 other African markets. From speaking to PropertPro, I got a feeling that their ultimate goal is to become a continental portal for property searches.

So now that PropertyPro is here, what’s different?

We already have sites like Property and PropertyBook that have thousands of listings so I was interested to understand what PropertyPro sees as their differentiator. PropertyPro believes their experience means they can offer a better experience compared to their competitors;

Our platform is our core product and that is the gospel. 2020might have opened a lot of hearts to use the internet more but we have been doing this long enough especially in the real estate market to provide the best tool of Searching and Marketing of properties.

Not the most original answer so I checked out 2 sites to compare; PropertyPro along with Property.co.zw vs PropertyBook. Now this isn’t a definitive guide as to which is better but just a cursory glance to put PropertyPro’s claims to test.

• All 3 offer an alerts system which could help people in the market get notified of listings they might be interested in.
• PropertyBook and PropertyPro also have blogs which offer advice about the housing. For this one, PropertyBook is the best because PropertyPro’s blog redirects to the Nigerian site which means the advice you get won’t always be in the local context.
• All 3 also offer a filtering tool but I felt Property.co.zw did a better job than the other two. Why? Well it’s just one subtle detail – you can filter by boreholes. We have water problems in Zim and so that subtle touch speaks to understanding the market and what people are looking for.
• PropertyPro has an application whilst the other two don’t have apps. Whether that’s a pro or a con depends on a user. I think having one is a good thing but I also understand why you may not NEED one.
• PropertyPro also allows house searchers to save houses to a wishlist, where on the other two I couldn’t find a similar feature. That’s pretty handy if you’re going to be comparing houses – something I suppose people searching for places do.

Quick comparison aside, PropertyPro also mentioned that another differentiator will be how they cater to the needs of market participants;

We are going to cater the needs of Property Developers, Agents to manage their daily business efficiently, with proper listing catalogues while still giving them the chance to provide superb customer experience

This isn’t quantifiable at the moment but those are the two vectors PropertyPro have suggested to be their biggest differentiators. Ultimately we do hope that PropertyPro’s entry into the local real estate market means a better digital experience for the consumer and will force all their competitors to work extra hard.