Armed with an honours degree in construction management, Scott Pickens, then 21, arrived in London in 1999 with the idea of following his brother to work and travel the world. But anger at how badly SA was selling its property market led him on a completely different track."I had to make money to get to Greece but all I could get was a low-paying job as a sweeper on a building site," he says. "It made me want to work out how people are making money."
He discovered quickly that it didn't happen on a building site, "where they don't take you seriously until you're 40". So he juggled slow promotion to site manager with completing a masters in construction information technology. "I'm not passionate about IT, but it could get me a job at [the construction company's] head office," he adds. At head office, he had to install a new management system "which gave me fantastic insight into the business", and set him up for a construction career.
But a weekend visit to a London property show in September 2003 suddenly changed his plans. "There were people from all over the world promoting their countries' properties and the British were buying," he says. "But the only SA organisation was SA Tourism. And their talk on property was actually about tourism. I got this moment of pure patriotism and felt really pissed off at how badly we were selling our property. I resigned on the Monday and launched International Property Services (IPS) with my partners."
It was a real struggle, he says. SA developers and estate agents weren't interested in giving him property to promote. Banks didn't want to lend to offshore buyers. And after touring the country he found the British and Irish weren't keen on buying SA property.
Then Pickens discovered London's 800 000 South Africans and made them his business focus. He began advertising SA property to this market. Trouble getting stock to sell continued, as did banks' reluctance to lend to young South Africans, many of whom are in their 20s and early 30s.
After four years of persevering, Pickens has built a database of 11 000 SA citizens in London interested in buying a property in SA. And demand is growing, by about 20 potential buyers a day. IPS sells up to 60 properties at each of its promotional events, and the developers are now lining up to do business with him.
"They [buyers] are not so much interested in investment properties but rather want a house or flat they can move into when they get back to SA," he says. "They also want 100% bonds to pay off with London income. If they have any cash saved up, they buy London property. But my partners and I are buying SA investment properties.
"British and Irish buyers appear only occasionally," he adds. "They're put off by the perception of SA crime and banks only giving them 50% mortgages."
Bruce Peach, a founder of SA residential development giant Summercon has bought into IPS, and is setting up more effective systems and has become its chairman. "Things are starting to cook," says Pickens.
Finds property in SA for South Africans living in London.