14
www.thevillagenews.co.za
7 October 2020
MY HOME
Should the days of show boards be numbered? By Stephen de Stadler Managing Director Fine & Country Hermanus, Arabella and Kleinmond
provision of more facilities would encourage more informal settlements, however, informal settlements come about in South Africa as a result of insufficient provision of social housing, and not because people particularly want to live in informal settlements.
uring the course of my career I have been fortunate enough to travel extensively outside our borders. From world cities with histories going back centuries to scenic rural towns across both Europe and Africa, one of the issues that all these inhabited areas have in common is the proliferation of waste and litter generated by the human species.
But what has this got to do with real estate in the towns and areas served by this newspaper?
Driving behind a car in Johannesburg recently, my vehicle was “assaulted” by the packaging of a meal provided by a well-known take-away outlet. That same afternoon I was viewing a property with a colleague and en route we passed an informal settlement where a pile of waste had accumulated to the extent that it was encroaching on the road. In the latter case the settlement probably had no formal refuse removal service, yet I could not help but wonder if there was not a potential quick win for a local politician if the municipality could be persuaded to provide a garbage dumpster in a central location. That would at least enable the people living in that informal settlement to keep their environment cleaner.
Any estate agent knows that exposure is important in order to ultimately attract a potential buyer to a property. We spend the majority of our marketing expenditure on presenting the property correctly, and then ensuring maximum exposure through the utilisation of as many channels as possible. Placing a home on show is obviously an important part of the process, but in today’s technological age, is it really necessary to direct a client through the use of pointers to a home that they have probably loaded on one of the many freely available map applications?
D
Some people will undoubtedly argue that the
This last weekend I was driving through Hermanus on a Saturday morning when I came across more of this urban litter that we as estate agents seem to think are required in order to sell a home. I am of course talking about show boards.
Most residential estates do not allow the use of show boards within the estate itself. This is because they recognise that the professional estate agent is able to correctly direct prospective clients to the home, without the use of direction-
al show boards. Does the lack of show boards within estates limit the ability to sell? Absolutely not. Before the onset of the internet, the largest form of advertising was the placing of show day advertisements in the Saturday press. These ads would typically direct the prospective buyer to follow the boards from the corner of a particular set of roads. In addition, it was not always possible to advertise all available homes, and show boards were also used to bring buyers to homes that had not been advertised in the local press. In today’s technological age, where every home is advertised on the company’s own and third party portals, where show days have been reduced to limited hours on a Saturday and Sunday, and where the pointers themselves often do not indicate the times of the show day itself, is there really any point in still displaying them from noon on a Friday till noon on the Monday?
What is the purpose behind creating an “eyesore” on certain corners in our town, week in and week out? Advertise your show days on your own and third party portals, provide the address, and the result will be the same. Those buyers who are interested in a particular home will find it during the time allotted to the show day. My colleagues and I will actively support the abolishment of show boards from the areas in which we work. We see no sense in our towns allowing unpaid advertising on a broad scale on every weekend. Professional and efficient estate agents do not rely on a chance buyer who followed a board in the hope that this board would lead to the home of his or her dreams. The days of urban littering should be numbered. The views expressed above are those of the writer in his personal capacity and may not necessarily reflect the views of Fine & Country as a national and international brand.
