 Internet auctions. Welcome to the new digital age where you can buy a house without getting up from your couch. If you don't understand how online auctions work, don't worry. We have got you. This is the Private Property Podcast. Do me here. Welcome. Congratulations to Shante Evans Shanto for walking away with that 500 grand cash prize from yesterday's show. Do the right thing and share this post with your friends and the person with the most shares will get 500 grand cash. So strap in and get comfortable because we will be going back in time to teach you a little bit more of our history. This is the South African history. Property rights are significant in South Africa because South Africans were wrongfully deprived of their homes during apartheid. People were forced to leave their homes and these were either taken away or demolished. Of course, since the Bill of Rights was commissioned, this has become a thing of the past. Thanks to strict property rights laws. A more recent piece of history, Bitstream is the first South African company dedicated to online property auctions. Founded by Craig Cooper, who is the MD of CRE Africa and warehouse finder, Bitstream launched in early 2020 and specializes in industrial and commercial properties. On the 19th of June, 1913, the government established the Natives Land Act number 27 of 1913. This act states that 7% of land will be allocated to Africans, while the more fertile land will be allocated to the white minority. The act also prohibited Africans from purchasing and renting any land that belonged to whites. The online property market auction is a growing field with an estimated 25% sale increase in five years. This also makes the South African property market accessible to overseas, whilst giving landlords a wider access to potential international buyers. Remember Oliver Thambo's famous words, we all belong to South Africa and South Africa belongs to us all. Not too long ago, I caught up with Tanya Smith and Anthony Strubelle from Pam Golding Properties Group, and we had a conversation about online property auctions. Tanya has a postgraduate diploma in financial planning and a become in law. She specializes in assisting the Pam Golding Properties Group with problem solving as well as conversations on the complicated transactions that surround online property auctions. The second guest joining us is in charge of incorporating a green agenda into the future of residential property in South Africa. This was the Pam Golding brand dimension and his vision is to raise awareness in the environmental spaces on the property industry. Here's how the conversation went. To me, nice to be here. Thank you, really appreciate you taking our time to talk property auctions and we're specifically talking online auctions, which is something that is becoming increasingly popular with how COVID has left the landscape of property looking. So let's just talk a little bit in terms of what it looks like. We've spoken about them before in terms of how they've changed or how people have now become accepting of them, but maybe Anthony, you can just take us through how a typical property auction looks before we get into the conversation that if someone is watching us for the first time, they know how a property auction looks, an online one that is, and what are the different things that are done there that are not done in a conventional one that is face to face. Yeah, so I think that's a great place to start to me. And I think your intro was quite insightful because you mentioned property investors and primary home buyers as a secondary market. And I think that's very true. So I think, you know, traditional property auctions are quite fierce in places. I think they're perceived as places where you get massive bargains, but where the quality potentially is not ideal. So there are auctions of the traditional auction and certainly in the minds of home buyers, proper everyday home buyers, that they very loaded in terms of being quite daunting and certainly the old days of physical auctions, we had to go to a property and they were perceived and still are too large to be the domain of bargain hunters, investors, which you mentioned earlier on cash flush, opportunists, developers, people looking to flip properties, etc, etc. So it's that traditional dimension of properties that I think the general public is scared of, firstly, they daunted by it, they daunted by the sort of energy and the intensity of the so-called auction room, being under pressure to bid. And primary home buyers like to take their time. They like to spend time on properties and what have you. So there's traditionally a contradiction there, i.e. they too intense, you can only buy distressed properties. So I think the general buying public has tended to write them off. And I think it's that principle that we are looking to change. And you mentioned that I think the online environment has become far more comfortable generally speaking, with people being able to engage online, being able to trade and buy online online shopping is now sort of an everyday event. And I think it's that trend towards that comfort around the online environment that we are looking to develop and to offer additional value to home buyers accordingly. Sure. Thank you so much for that. Tanja, I'll bring you in here and ask about the process or the process of actually going into the online auction and how different it is. And I like that Anthony was talking about the pressure that a lot of people face. That even anxiety, the anxiety already exists with getting a property. But now it's this different mode of transacting that is making people a little bit also jittery. Just talk us through the process. How does the process look and what does one need to prepare in order to go into an online auction? And how does it look before the deal is initiated all the way to when the deal is closed? I think what's important firstly is to distinguish between how we present our auctions and how traditional auctions work, as Anthony mentioned. So what we try to do is we try to help buyers buy property in a very, in a non-invasive space. So how we change it, if we have a process where we allow finance buyers to consider properties and get finance and buy property on auction, but earlier process. And then we also lead buyers by the property on auction, but it's a timed auction. So we give buyers the dictate period to consider if they want to buy the property. And we just found that giving all the buyers on a property an hour to compete may work from a competitive advantage, but it doesn't necessarily give buyers comfort. You know, a normal private treaty buyer, it's just too competitive a space. So what we do, we charge a minimal fee for buyers to take part in the auction to register. They only have to upload an ID in a proof of residence. And if they're the successful bidder, the fee is allocated towards the purchase price, otherwise it's refunded to the buyers afterwards. So it literally costs buyers nothing to take part in the auction apart from actually just committing to be part of the process. And once they are inside the building or the auction room, how does it look for them? Are they in a virtual room that they need to be sending maybe chats on a Zoom call or whatever platform that's being used? Take us a little bit through that experience and how it becomes exhilarating even because traditional auctions are exhilarating. People want to hear that hammer being slammed and hearing going once, going twice. Is it the same? Is it done the same, exactly the same way or are there particular things that are done to tweak it because it's an online environment? And do you want to get this one? Yeah, I will. So no, there's no hammer. There's no room. It is merely giving you a live online place to place your bid. So it's live bidding. You can see your competitors. You can't see their names, but they've all got bidding numbers. And basically you start at what we call an opening bid, which is set at the beginning of the auction. And you're able then to place your bids live and you see those bids being placed. So they are competitive. They are clicking up over time. And there is that energy. But I think going to the hammer once again, we want to alleviate the hammer. So the best way of putting it is we've tried to take all the exciting things and the good things of an auction, but alleviate all the bad things of an auction. So in other words, that intensity, the nervousness, the insecurity, just giving more time and providing the buyers the opportunity to bid against each other and push that price up between the comfort of your own home. You're not daunted by an environment where there is a man or a woman wielding a hammer and you feel like you have to offer. I think primary home buyers, they like to take time. And auctions historically didn't give you that time. And they like to be in comfort. They like to be able to engage with family and friends and what have you. All those wonderful things, they tend to disappear when you're in the context and the intensity of an actual auction room. So that's what we've tried to develop is give buyers that comfort, but yet still the excitement of being able to bid in lifetime. Yes, Tanya. And sorry, I just want to add that basically the online auction is accessible via laptops and email and cell phones as well. So you can basically take part in the auction from any platform that you want. And as soon as you register for a property or you can also ask to be notified if any offers are made on the property. So you'll receive an email as soon as somebody plays the bid and you will be able to increase your bid. And then at the end of the auction, obviously it's going to get a bit more heated. So if somebody places the bid in the last minute, the auction period will automatically be extended for another minute to give another party time to increase their bid. So it does get a bit more heated towards the end of the auction. Sure. No, thank you so much for that. And very insightful. So before we wrap up our conversation tonight, what advice would you like to give? And I'll take both of you with this in regard to this to say, what advice would you give to property players and people who are prospective in the market, people who are already investing, people who want to grow their portfolios? What advice would you give them when it comes to online auctions? We've already really ascertained that this is one of those things that one needs to start doing. If depending on their needs, depending on what they would like to do with their portfolio, it's something to explore. But what would you advise them to do going forward? Sangya, let me start with you on this first. Ladies first. I would say if you're a buyer and you're not a seasoned buyer, you must know how much you want to spend upfront because it can get quite hot, the bidding and you might get carried away. So that's very important. And you must you must equip yourself with knowledge. So even as a seller, you must never move out of your comfort zone. You must make sure that you deal with people who support you and equip you with knowledge so that you are completely comfortable with the process. And that would be my advice. And Alex, I'll extend that if I may. So in this day and age, to me, buyers have such incredible access to information on properties and access to pricing and value information. So you really, really can, as a buyer, get a very, very good understanding for price. Look, price is very influenced by what's happening today. If you're looking at a particular suburb and they're 50 properties for sale and then tomorrow they're only 10 or next month they're only 10, pricing is relevant to the exact point in time. But the best advice we can give any buyers get to understand value in the market. What's selling for what's a good price, what's a premium price. And then when you're equipped with that knowledge of understanding real value, then you're able to buy the best deal. Because I think property, it's critical, like any investment, whatever you can buy at, knowing that there's an upside value is a good investment. And I think we say that you mentioned property portfolios. And once again, you're talking primarily from an investment perspective. We like to talk to the primary buyer who's not looking at a portfolio. They've got a home, they want to sell their home, now they want to buy a new home. Our mission here is to make auctions viable and valuable and accessible to those primary one home buyers because there's incredible value to be had there. Value is not confined to the savvy investor. We want to make the everyday home buyer aware of the real concept of value and the ability to buy really well and get a very, very good deal. That's really what we're trying to offer them. No, thank you so much. I just want to add to me, sorry, I also feel that it's important to deal with a reputable brand. I'm not saying there's not great smaller companies out there, but if you deal with a big brand, it's easy to escalate if there's a problem or get matters resolved if anything goes wrong. So I think especially if you're moving out of your comfort zone, it's very important to trust the person that you're dealing with. No, definitely. And that's the reason why we brought the experts in to have this conversation with tonight. Thank you so much, Anthony. Thank you so much for taking our time and informing our family in terms of what to do when it comes to online auctions. Thank you so much for joining us and have a great evening. And thank you to you for staying till the end of the show. What an informative conversation around online property auctions. The time has come for us to now tell you who won that 500 grand cash prize. Thank you so much for sharing and engaging with us. And the winner for that prize is drum roll, please. Thank you so much for engaging with us and 500 grand is coming your way. And if you are also standing in line to win that 500 grand, make sure that you watch us every single weekday, 7pm right here on the private property podcast. Also, do ensure that you subscribe to all our social media pages, like, comment and subscribe so that you never get to miss a beat. Have a beautiful one. My name is Tumi. Have a good evening.