Brandon Swanepoel - Kent Gush Eye of Africa

Our family history may be very much like your own - alive with change and transformation, but consistently resonating the values and culture which give us our identity.

1971:
Our Chairman, Bill Rawson, entered the property industry in 1971 at the age of 21. After three years he became a partner in the business that employed him. In 1978, at the age of 29, he established his own agency and four years later he began to challenge other players in the marketplace, operating from a modest 40m2 office in Claremont, Cape Town.

1978:
This was the beginning of "Bill Rawson Estates". From this modest office, Bill Rawson employed and managed a team of 25 estate agents and insisted on their continuous training through courses that he designed and conducted personally.

1998:
With a commitment to service excellence through training and an emphasis on business ethics, Bill Rawson went about building his agency into a multi-franchise organisation. In 1998, after sixteen years of solid growth, he launched the franchise group under the "Rawson Properties" brand.

2004:
In 2004, Rawson Properties was nominated as a Superbrand by the Independent Superbrand Council of South Africa. What followed was a carefully planned national expansion campaign, with Rawson increasing its visibility in all the major provinces of South Africa.

Today:
Today the Rawson brand is a forerunner in the South African property industry and comprises some 200 franchises and over 1000 Sales Partners nationwide. According to Finweek (May 2011), Rawson is the ‘4th largest real estate group in South Africa’.