Would you use this?

seemore

Hi All,

Thinking of creating a website & would appreciate if you'd reply to say whether you'd use such a service...

If a Property Website existed which specialised in 'local' homes for sale & to let.. (think of it like an Auto Trader but for property)

Q: Would you consider using it to advertise your house rather than using an estate agent?

Please assume this site offers:
* Ranks 1st page on Google for property in 'your' town.
* A fixed up-front charge (approx £250)
* Trained Photographer to take pictures of the property
* Free & unlimited updates (price changes etc)
* No tie in period OR cancellation charges
* No estate agent style % charge of the selling price
* Free 0844 XXX XXX tel number for buyers to call you3

This proposed site would specialise in 'local' property specific to one region - therefore hopefully becoming more relavent to that region than other similar sites which seem to cover the entire UK...

Any questions etc welcome of course.

DannyboyMidlands

I wouldn't use it and I doubt it'd get off the ground. Sarah Beeny and others have tried it but the problem is that if nobody uses it then nobody else uses it because nobody uses it...............etc etc.

I'd basically be paying £250 for some photos that nobody will ever look at.

Why would a buyer bother using the site when they can go on rightmove and search by any number of variables, including distance.

seemore

DannyboyMidlands wrote: »

I wouldn't use it and I doubt it'd get off the ground. Sarah Beeny and others have tried it but the problem is that if nobody uses it then nobody else uses it because nobody uses it...............etc etc..

I agree the key to getting started would depend on how many properties you could launch with. For the purpose of this thread, please assume the site does already have a good number of local properties listed.

DannyboyMidlands wrote: »

I'd basically be paying £250 for some photos that nobody will ever look at.

I'm confident in my abiliy to have the site indexed well with search engines - therefore people searching for a house in my region would see the site

DannyboyMidlands wrote: »

Why would a buyer bother using the site when they can go on rightmove and search by any number of variables, including distance.

Other sites cover much wider areas. I'm thinking about a site specialising in local property within a single region and have many idea's for 'region specific' content which simply doesnt exist on pre-existing sites like this

evoke

OP: sorry, the answer is no.

EAs use the leading property sites already (Findaproperty, Rightmove, etc). These are already plenty good enough.

googler

The individual agents' websites allow me to search by town, region or other variables.

The main portals also allow me to search by similar variables.

You either have the above scenario, or you have a single website for each 'local' region, as I see it.

I'm also struggling to see what your site will have to offer as a unique selling point, and struggling to discuss it based on the presumption that you already have lots of listings, as this is where I think you'll struggle, without an imperative USP to get people to sign up with you.

DannyboyMidlands

I don't think that a prominent listing in search engines would make much difference. Again, as a buyer, I don't type "houses for sale in X" into google. I go onto rightmove and can search within a specific radius of where I want. Why restrict myself to your definition of local when I can define my own? On rightmove I can even draw a wiggly line on a map and search inside that.

In the early days findaproperty was restricted to searching specific areas and that made it a nightmare to use. I don't know what it's like now because the experience put me off for life.

GDB2222

Is there any way for someone selling their own home themselves to get their property on Rightmove or Findaproperty without going through an EA? If not, that's a possible market niche.

pararct

Am all for innovation and this is a good idea. If you are a serious web designer then you will know the whole keboodle will live or die on the keywords used by the user in search.... You should also know that google has a very efficient free tool which will give you rough figures for the numbers of searches (in a Month) you envisage your site(s) will be found for. Now if I was looking to buy a house in Leeds and I knew about rightmove I would simply search rightmove and then enter the terms I wanted to narrow it down. You need to try and capture the ones that don't know about rightmove but second guessing what term they would use in the search and optimising for those words is going to be quite difficult, particularly if you want to run this as a national thing. I suspect it is possible to achieve what you want to do but it will not be as easy as you envisage. You need to work out once you have the number of average searches if the time, effort and expenditure is worth the return. That said Rightmove had to start somewhere once as well.

DannyboyMidlands

GDB2222 wrote: »

Is there any way for someone selling their own home themselves to get their property on Rightmove or Findaproperty without going through an EA? If not, that's a possible market niche.

I think that you've just hit the nail on the head. I'm sure rightmove have considered it but the problem is that most of their money currently comes from EA's who would be pretty p*ssed off if the site started to let vendors bypass them.

GAH

OP, I would save your money and plough it into something else. There are quite a few 'so called agents' who charge a fee which is a fraction of yours, which allow homeowners to get their homes onto all of the top web portals.

And for just a little more money than you are suggesting, you can advertise your home with one of the top online agents.

I can see what you are trying to suggest, trying concentrate locally, but your target audience won't really care about that if you are solely internet based.

Plus with all the points below from what you have suggested, you will have find lots of properties to make a living, £250 minus Advertising - Professional photo's, other overheads, won't leave you much in way of profit.

seemore

Main Unique Selling Points (USP's) of the proposed site would be:

* It specialises in local property from just one region
- catering for people who want to buy/rent but stay in their region

* A sigle up-front fee - circa £250 tbc
- versus the typical agent fee of between 1%~3.5%+vat of the selling price. On a £150k sale @ 1%+vat thats £1.8k in fees!

* No contract & No cancellation charges

Who would it be aimed at:

* People who want to sell privately & avoid using an agent
* People who may already be with an agent & who want MORE marketing for their property
* Landlords with properties to let