South Africa’s leading property portal, Private Property, joined forces with Caxton Digital Media. Pieter Oosthuizen of Private Property and Nicole Vosser of Caxton Digital, shares how this partnership will benefit local communities and the property industry as a whole.
Bonnie Mbuli:
Private Property recently concluded an exciting deal that saw South Africa's leading property portal undergo a change in ownership. Partnering up with none other than Caxton CTP publishers and printers. Joining me in studio today to chat more about this exciting transition is Pieter Oosthuizen from Private Property and Nicole Vosser from Caxton Digital. Welcome.
Bonnie Mbuli:
So tell us a bit about Caxton and its history, Nicole.
Nicole:
Caxton is one of South Africa's largest publishers and printers of magazines, books, newspapers, and even websites. We've been around for many, many years. Almost as old as me actually. And yes, we basically are a JSE listed company. So I like to think that we're quite a big fish.
Bonnie Mbuli:
You host quite a variety of publications under your umbrella. Tell us about some of them.
Nicole:
So from the local media side, we have approximately 140 local newspapers that get put into the community's post boxes every week. They look forward to receiving those. Obviously, get very upset if they don't receive them, give us a phone call. We also have a footprint of 3.7 million copies that go out weekly. So quite a nice area that we cover. And we also have national publications such as our magazine department. You might be familiar with the rooi rose magazine, BONA, Farmer's Weekly, Garden and Home, just to name a few. And then, we've also got our national publication which is The Citizen.
Bonnie Mbuli:
So, Pieter, we've got a long-standing relationship with Private Property from Win a Home and also recently discussing your new app which has been met with great excitement. So tell us what this means for Private Property.
Pieter:
Yeah. Thanks for having us and especially around here. We've had great results so thanks to you guys. Yeah. The Caxton partnership from day one the team have been really committed to our success. And as a business, we want to grow our brand and our core offering. For us, this is almost a marriage of traditional and digital. And though digital will always be our core, we understand that there are markets will still haven't reached and some guys will still start their property search offline. And we think this is a great way to drive our message and our property experience through those channels.
Bonnie Mbuli:
Yeah. Now, we've heard from Private Property side, but what does this merger mean for Caxton?
Nicole:
So for Caxton, we are still very relevant, especially, like I was saying earlier about the local community. So we pride ourselves in being well-supported. The papers still get a lot of readership and are still really relevant in the communities. More recently, we've invested quite heavily in the digital space. We expanded by launching 82 local newspaper websites around the brands that we already have. We reach over 5.5 million visitors through these websites per month. And through our associated companies and partners, the likes of The Citizen, Money Web, we really want to be able to grow the Private Property brand as much as we can through this network. We feel that through us having that local expertise and Private Property having the property expertise we can really then showcase this. Not through just the traditional media, but through various digital touch points as well.
Bonnie Mbuli:
So a leading online property portal joins forces with a media giant. What does this mean for myself as an individual when I access your website?
Pieter:
As a national website, we have a great national footprint. The Caxton's partnership really allows us to reach further and especially, into these local communities, just putting more properties in front of more buyers more often
Nicole:
Yeah. And I think from our side, we are really entrenched in the communities. We're very involved in their daily lives. We pride ourselves with having the journalists out there getting the latest news all the time. And I think that from my experience as well when you are searching for property and investing in either buying or renting, you really need to have some sort of expertise in front of you. So by combining both companies, we feel that we can really get in front of their consumer. And leverage off what we have from a traditional side. But then, also from an online side. And really give that information freely to them, meeting all their needs, from local news to property listings. So yeah, in this case with the property side we believe that the partnership can really achieve this.
Bonnie Mbuli:
This definitely offers the consumer a more holistic experience. What does this mean for the real estate industry?
Pieter:
For us, we really want to add value to our real estate agent partners. But that also starts with a great consumer experience. I think for us, we want to leverage the print and digital assets and yeah, showcase our great property content. So that real estate agents and the consumers will ultimately benefit.
Bonnie Mbuli:
Absolutely. Well, it's very exciting. And I'm sure we'll be hearing about it from you soon again.
Pieter and Nicole:
Thanks a lot.
Bonnie Mbuli:
So for more information, please go to www.privateproperty.co.za.
