More Sellers are Starting to Cut Estate Agents Out of the Loop!

by Mark Johnston

More Sellers are Starting to Cut Estate Agents Out of the Loop!

It appears that in the current climate more home searchers hunt out properties online to look at the pictures and specifications of a house. In fact, according to Rightmove, more than 95 per cent of all property searches in Britain now take place on the web.

With this in mind, there have been a number of online estate agents set up in recent years which offer to put your house up for sale and claim to charge a considerable smaller amount than the traditional estate agent.

‘Do It Yourself’ home selling websites cut out the high street shop window, which is now far less important, and get you on the internet where most people now search.

 The intermediaries allow property sellers to advertise their homes online for a fixed fee far below the sums scooped up by estate agents via commission.

In fact research from consumer group Which? carried out last year found that on average, 1.8 per cent of a property sale is taken by an estate agent.

Websites, such as emoov, House Simple and property guru Sarah Beeny’s Tepilo, offer to market a home owners property online for a fraction of cost of a local estate agent and leave the home owner in control of selling their home.

 Emoov for example, was launched in November 2009 and it promises to market any house UK wide to a  potentialyl massive internet audience instantly. The company states that this means millions of potential buyers will look at the house and therefore they add that the  average property on the website sells in 42 days.

 It does lists properties on most of the major property portals, such as Rightmove, Zoopla, Globrix, Prime Location and FindaProperty, and also in 270 local newspaper websites.

The lowest package home sellers can take out with the website is £99 plus Value Added Tax (VAT) for one month’s marketing. but its most popular package is its £349 deal, which has no time restraints.

House Simple and Tepilo both offer similar services to emoov.

House Simple has five different packages – some that charge an upfront fee, but no completion fee, and vice versa.

Again house simple lists the property on the major house selling websites and it says these combined generate around 180 million buyer searches per month.

However,  Tepilo – which was launched by popular TV personality and property expert Sarah Beeny back in 2009 – offers home sellers the chance to list their property for free, with no upfront fee or commission.

The biggest downfall to it, is the fact it does not list on some of the largest property websites such as Rightmove and FindaProperty, but then it is free.

It is always worth remembering that estate agents do provide a more comprehensive service than intermediaries, including offering complaint processes and redress if needed.

 Therefore, some estate agent groups have warned that sellers could be misled into thinking so-called ‘passive intermediaries’, which do not provide these, are bona fide agents.

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