Best Private Sales Website - SO

jonnydoe

Yes we need to hear from more people who've sold through housenetwork (Positive and negative)

jonnydoe

Also, anyone sold through the private companies (littlehousecompany) etc.. as this is the topic of the thread lol

courtjester

Jorgan wrote:

Boards are a great marketing tool, even if you are in a quiet cul de sac. Your neighbours may know someone looking to move into your area, they may even aspire to own your property, they may tell a friend that a property has become available in their road, the friend tells their friend who is looking to move. Many people drive round looking for boards, they are serious buyers. We get calls all the time from people enquiring about houses in cul de sacs, they see the board & call to get more information.

...and not forgetting that you don't know if one or more of your neighbours are selling a property in your cul-de-sac and not using a board themselves - buyers sent around to view their property will of course see any sign standing outside yours, so this is also a great way to 'feed off' other agents prospects.

lynzpower

do you think there is any way around the lease that says no for sale boards?

Lotta_Littlies

lynzpower wrote:

thanks for this, its these sort of experiences Im after hearing about? How have your complaints been handled?

They were ignored. Another thing that annoyed me was that our property was not on certain sites that HN said it would be on and took a couple of emails chasing them up on why it hadn't been done. The Live Help is rarely on too and I think it's actually a very small company. The details they put on the site were incorrect. They state that you will get feedback on statistics through marketing sent out/phone calls/site queries but we've had nothing at all. When queried they said that it would be in our account when we logged in automatically once anything had happened but there is still nothing over six weeks on. I don't believe that there have been no other queries on our property apart from the one viewing (which as I said before was arranged within an hour of the property going on the site, so I don't believe it was a genuine viewing). I don't think that apart from putting your details out to other sites they do much else in the way of marketing at all. I'd like to hear some positive stories of anyone who has used them though.

I don't think there is anything good I can say about them. I've left our property on with them because, a) I've paid for it so may as well use the extra advertising on the other sites and b) it would be nice for them to redeem themselves and do something. Unfortunately I don't hold out much hope. They seem a very small, tin pot company that can't deliver their promises.

Lotta

lynzpower

lotta

Would you mind PMing me the link to your place just out of interest - thanks ever so much, this is really appreciated

I have notice that the live support is off, but then Ive only been looking at it for a few days, will def keep an eye on that

Lotta_Littlies

Have pm'd you.

Lotta

feesh

Sorry I've been poorly today and not had chance to catch up with this thread. Head is still too fuzzy to read it all, but I think some of you wanted more explanation of my experience with House Network.

The flat is in Laindon, Essex http://www.housenetwork.co.uk/my_site.asp?id=robiniarm&house=1 (hence we have been able to deal directly with the owners of Housenetwork in Romford - I actually had to call them on the day we were due to have our photos done and said we'd not be home until late because of train delays - the lady in the call centre put me through to the MD of Housenetwork, who said no worries, he'd come round later in the evening himself to do the pics).

He took the pics on Wednesday, they went on the HouseNetwork website on Thursday, and appeared on Rightmove after it updated itself on the Friday (I understand that Rightmove is a little slow to respond to changes in agenst' websites). About an hour after we noticed it had gone live on Rightmove, we had our first viewing arranged for that weekend from someone who'd spotted us on Rightmove, and he made a good offer on the Monday on condition that we took it off the market.

I know an hour seems suspiciously quick, but if you're like me, you have got Rightmove updating itself almost constantly on your computer in the background to keep an eye out for updates, and I also got emails off Rightmove whenever new properties came on.

We are househunting in Hertfordshire, where there seem to be LOADS of Housenetwork boards up (that's how we found out about them). We saw a couple of places through Housenetwork but they sold within a week of going online and we missed out on them due to us being indecisive!

Hope this helps
Feesh
PS I have the personal mobile number of the Housenetwork MD if anyone has any problems with them!!!
PPS I know they are actually an estate agents, but we had 3 estate agents who did our valuations who were REALLY keen to put the flat on for us and we managed to haggle them down to quite a small % to act as 2nd agency if we needed them. But we didn't need them in the end!

feesh

Its also worth mentioning that we put many weeks of hard work into getting the flat into perfect condition. Our target market was FTB or BTL so we felt that tip-top condition was necessary. As you can hopefully see from the pics it is immaculate and looks almost like a show home, so we were confident it would sell quickly without needing a 'traditional' estate agent, especially because FTBers are younger and therefore more likely to use the internet.

I guess there are houses out there which need a bit more of a hard sell than just relying on website hits, so you need to take this into account when choosing which road to go down.

lynzpower

Feesh ,

thanks a lot for that, can I say your place looks in absolute tip-top, did you clean it with a toothbrush? It looks fantastic.

Im definately waiting a little while as the garden is scroched to hell in this weather and also there are a few bits we need to do before we get the photographers in in any case.

Thanks for the tip about the MDs phone no, might come back to you one day if I need it :beer: