The local real estate industry has experienced a major transformation over the past decade. The following section is an exerpt from the results of research thesis completed at UCT on the effect of virtual tours on home buying and selling. The research compared the changes of the real estate economy in the USA to the local South African economy. This is followed by an article released 6 years later by Mail & Guardian. The rest is obvious and I leave to you to put the pieces together.

A home purchase is traditionally a distributed process where home buyers approach and examine a number of homes. IPSEs (Internet Property Search Engines) have assisted home buyers in short-listing properties. However the text descriptions are usually “hyped” and do not provide an accurate representation of the property. The addition of professional photography and virtual tours to IPSEs in the USA had significant impact on residential property brokerages, with the benefits they provided to everyone involved acting as catalyst in the movement from traditional brokerages to the online brokerage. Home buyers search for properties under specific criteria and when they find something that meets their specifications, they contact the seller or listing agency. 
 
In the USA it was found that more information was available at a lower cost, which reduced the demand for brokerage services. The brokerages found the only way to remain competitive was to raise their operating efficiency by increasing the level of investment in information technology and operating on a  leaner workforce at a premium price. Many  small  firms exited  the  industry, while others continued to survive through merger and consolidation. 
 
South Africa in contrast has a third world, problematic economy. However it has a salubrious climate and the exchange rate of the Z.A. Rand is highly in favour of the foreign buyer. Local agents and residential brokerages have residual misconceptions about the Internet and virtual tours, as they are inexperienced with the Internet and e-mail. The research was an attempt to provide factual information to the local brokerages that the Internet incorporated with virtual tours is a suitable and effective marketing platform for residential properties.

The research surveyed residential home buyers and sellers to find out if this demand for virtual tours as an added service from residential property brokerages exists among the local and foreign IPSE users. The respondents were users of the Pam Golding IPSE who chose to answer the online survey. The results proved overwhelmingly positive. The demand for professional photography and virtual tours on residential properties from both local and foreign home buyers and sellers was proven to be considerable.  
 
The research demonstrated to South African residential property brokerages that local and foreign home  buyers and sellers of the residential homes are  users of the local  IPSEs.  They are searching for homes on the Internet before visiting a residential property brokerage, and this trend can be expected to grow exponentially.  
 
The considerable demand for virtual tours as an added service of residential property brokerages from buyer and sellers exists in the middle to upper residential market. The brokerages that make professional photographs and virtual tours available on their middle to upper residential listings will experience significant benefits. The increase in scope of potential buyers and the increase speed with which properties can be viewed and short-listed will increase sales and save the brokerages time and expense in wasted viewings. Those brokerages that evaluate and determine the best ways to satisfy the demand by incorporating virtual tours into their Internet listing strategies stand to come out on top.  
 
The IPSEs who have the most listings and have professioanl photographs and virtual tours available on a large portion of their middle to upper residential listings will experience the most Internet traffic from upper residential home buyers and sellers. This will in turn induce more brokerages to add their homes to the search engine and will result in a greater volume of upper residential Internet traffic. 

The incorporation of virtual tours with Internet listings has been shown to provide an exceedingly useful means of undertaking the arduous task of finding a suitable home to purchase. There is an emotional aspect to purchasing a home, when one takes into account buying a home is generally the largest financial commitment an individual will ever make.

Virtual tours ease the process and allow all parties involved to communicate and make decisions in a much less stressful manner. It can be said that time, effort and money are people’s three most valuable assets, and here virtual tours are saving people an immense amount of time and effort within the home buying process.

"Phenomenal growth recorded in SA web use"

The research above was completed in 2001, read the following article from the Mail & Guardian on the 18th of June 2007.

Internet usage in South Africa is skyrocketing. The number of active South African browsers on the web has grown by 121% from 1,8-million in May 2005 to 3,9-million in May this year. In the same period, the number of page impressions grew by 129% from 91-million to 207-million.

These are the key findings of South Africa's Exploding Internet a research report released on Monday by Nielsen//NetRatings, a global leader in internet media and market research.

"In terms of the number of people using the internet, the most developed markets in the northern hemisphere have seen a plateauing of growth over the last year or so. In contrast, South Africa has seen phenomenal expansion -- growing by around 50% in each of the last two years," explains Alex Burmaster, internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings.

"This type of growth is, of course, something we have seen across all markets as the internet has taken hold and moved away from a niche activity to a very mainstream form of media and the integral part of life."

Striking in the research findings is the huge share of English speakers within the South African internet population. English is primarily spoken at home by about two million South Africans, which adds up to 52% of the internet population. The other big chunk is taken by Afrikaans at 28%, leaving African languages far behind.

Says Burmaster: "The majority of the internet population speaks English and the vast majority of online content is English. While the South African internet is experiencing huge growth in this area, the opportunity for hyper-audience growth in the future lies in targeting African-language speakers."

Among South African web users, 22% have a degree and 15% have a postgraduate degree. There are slightly more men (54%) than women, and the age group of 18 to 29 years old accounts for 35% of users.

Unsurprisingly, 44% of the South African internet population lives in Gauteng and 18% in Cape Town. The rest of the web users are scattered throughout South Africa.

Not meaning to be Dr Doom but the readings above paints a very clear picture for the middle to upper residential property market in South Africa, either invest heavily in Information Technology or slowly die out. An easy to use, up to date website with professional photographs and virtual tours is literally the bare minimum requirement, if you want to stay with the game. The Internet is predominantly the first point of research when looking to purchase property.