Digs Connect Claimed

We’d love to share our vision with you!

It all started in 2018 at the peak of the student accommodation protests. Alexandria Procter, the boss lady, was sitting in her SRC office in the Steve Biko building at the University of Cape Town daydreaming about innovative ways to connect landlords who have empty beds and students who needed accommodation. The solution she came up with? An excel spreadsheet.

She managed to convince Greg Keal to jump on board, and DigsConnect Version 1 was born.

Fast forward to 2021. We are now the largest platform connecting young people with the homes of their dreams on the African continent. We’ve connected more than 50 000 people on our platform over the past 36 months and counting!

The core value proposition hasn’t changed from day 1, it’s just more user-friendly. Landlords list their properties on our website, and young people visit the website to send an enquiry directly to the landlord.

We know that finding and renting out a home is about more than you can share in a little form on a website, so we’ve introduced Digs Chat directly linked to the booking form so that you can get to know each other before signing any documents.

Throughout our history it has remained totally free for landlords to list on our platform, charging a small service fee only when they are able to successfully place a student in their property.

Safety on our platform is super important to us. We require all users to add a profile picture, validate their cell phone number and email address and to provide their ID number, just to check that you’re chatting to the person you think that you are. That said, we still encourage users just to make extra sure before making any big decisions. It is also recommended that you stay on Digs Chat and don’t move onto other chat apps in order to protect your privacy and security.

We’re building a community of students, tenants, landlords and partnered academic institutions who share our vision of creating a platform that connects people in a safe and secure environment around the world.

For Landlords

We’ve designed a booking form that tenants complete which includes:

• A profile picture of the tenant
• Name
• Ideal move-in date
• Dream lease period
• Whether they are a student or a young adult
• Where they studying (if applicable)
• Whether they are an undergrad or postgrad (if applicable)
• The rent payer

By adding this we are able to screen for quality and intent, saving you time scrolling through hundreds of non-starter enquiries from other platforms. We then ask them to send the first message in the Digs chat to ask any questions they may have. You can then chat directly with them!

You’ll get an email and SMS every time you get an enquiry or new message. Then the timer starts! You only have 48 hours to get back to the tenant, or the booking enquiry will expire. We have found that the faster the reply, the higher the likelihood of the deal being successful.

We also have a full-time team who are available to guide you through the entire process! We only charge on success, so if you don’t find a tenant that meets your requirements then you don’t pay.

For tenants

We’ve partnered with most private colleges in South Africa and a few public universities to bring you a selection of options close to your campus.

On every single listing, there is a little map with a drop-down for you to select your college and it’ll give you the walking and driving distance from the property to your campus.

We have a team that chats to every landlord on our platform making sure they have validated their cell phone number, email address and provided us with their ID number. We still ask that you always keep your conversations to the Digs Chat though and don’t share any personal information before double-checking the landlord’s details and identity.

Once you’ve filled in the short booking enquiry form and sent the first message to the landlord they will have 48 hours to get back to you. From there you can chat till you’re totally happy with the place, and then you can conclude the deal. Easy as that.

You’ll get an email and SMS every time you get a new message.

If you don’t find something you totally love, then add an alert from the Find a Digs page and whenever a property is added that meets your requirements, we’ll send you an email with a link to the listing.