South Africa’s 50-office Leapfrog Property Group has entered into a new phase of growth that will both reinforce and expand its national operating footprint in the South African residential property market.

This was announced by Ronald Ennik, a director and equity holder of Leapfrog.

The company was launched in 2007 by Jan le Roux, the former CEO of the PA Group (the holding company of mortgage originator Betterbond).

The key elements of Leapfrog property’s new expansion phase, says Ennik, include

• an intensive countrywide drive to recruit additional top-drawer agents and franchise holders
• the roll-out of Leapfrog into the Free State and Limpopo provinces
• intensifying Leapfrog’s already robust operations in Soweto, and
• building on the success of a sales and rental unit that has already carved a strong market foothold in Johannesburg City and its ‘dormitory’ fringe areas, including Braamfontein and Berea.

The first step on Leapfrog’s latest growth path was the appointment last year of Ennik. He has a national operating mandate, with particular emphasis on growing the Leapfrog property brand in the Gauteng market, in which he is an acknowledged expert and strategist. Ennik is also the former head of the Gauteng Division of Pam Golding Properties.

“One of my main objectives from here on will be to establish Leapfrog as a key force in the wide-ranging Sandton area, in which some of the old-established real estate groups have been dominant in the past,” says Ennik.

Recruitment of quality agents is one of Leapfrog’s biggest expansion initiatives right now throughout the South African property market.

“A major attraction in this process is a tried and tested Leapfrog incentive formula which enables agents, both existing and new, to participate in an incentive package that is unprecedented in the market. This includes incremental equity participation in the company, linked to home sales they generate.

“Furthermore, our agents also enjoy ongoing (annuity) income when they recruit successful new agents into Leapfrog anywhere in the country,” says Ennik.