Straw Poll - Selling Houses would you sell it yourself

TBeckett100

Dear All

Thinking of setting up a website for the large town in which i live selling property. the vendor would in effect sell the propert themselves, load it up and do the pictures etc though we could add a bolt of service for taking pictures, for sale board and accompanies viewings for security.

quick question, if a company offered the same for your town and advertised in the property section of your paper, would you take a chance atg selling your home for say £100?

robwend

theres loads of site already doing this , unless you can get them on rightmove i wouldnt bother:)

tigergold

agree with rob, there are loads of sites already doing this: but maybe if you are specialising in one place or offering something new - eg.house doctor treatment with every "premium" advert

i used property broker.com and would use them again.

MJMum

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saxy1

Agree with the other posts, there are so many other companies already doing this (some more successfully than others) you need to to do a lot of research before you even consider this, it is not an easy business, trust me I know!!

djm1972

Yes there are plenty of DIY home sale websites, but I'm not sure there are any that include advertising in the property section of your local paper - which (please correct me if i'm wrong) is the key difference being offered here.

But are you sure you can offer this for such a low price? And if so, can you offer it "Until Sold", and for every customer currently listing with you...?

courtjester

The reason there are possibly around 200+ property websites operating in the UK at present, most of which offer little or no value at all, is that it's very easy to look at an existing concept and think 'that looks easy, I could do that and make loads of dosh....." [not].

Newspaper advertising is very expensive, so it is not an efficient way of advertising a low-cost product or service. In addition, there are at least 4-5 well-established national services that have been offering this service for years online and do it very well. Setting up a new business to try and compete with those that already have the experience and market presence, whilst offering nothing innovative would almost certainly go nowhere.

You have to look at the legal side of what you are contemplating (which sounds to me like estate agency and so would be subject to all the various laws, regulations and insurance requirements), marketing and competing with local agents and financing the business through (potentially) a very long period of low customer numbers.

Most agents in provincial towns count as little as 40-50 customers on their books at any one time, turning these over possibly every 3 months, so even if you could compete with them (and the national services that cover your town), you might be looking at a *maximum* of 10-15 customers a month - say £1,500 revenue. Then you have your start up costs, design and development of the website (£5,000-£10,000 possibly for the most basic unless you buy an 'off-the-shelf' web format which doesn't do your brand much good), operating expenses, premises, advertising and marketing costs, staffing, legal expenses, travel costs, costs of producing signs etc., etc.,....

Suddenly, it doesn't look quite so easy ...

Anybody contemplating setting up a business needs to do a great deal of research into their target market and prepare a solid business plan, preferably taking sound advice from organisations like Business Link, who should be your first step.

TBeckett100

I would have to look at costs for advertising, but to kick start I would offer the first adverts on a free or pay when its sold basis.

I think the key difference to what I want to do is offer people more than just a website, but services which they can order as well such as accompanied viewing, board, photos and we would handle the enquiries.

Its a risky business, but to be honest I am sure people would risk £100.00 advertising with a company that is in the papers each week and who are there to pop round for viewings (on a £10 fee basis or whatever).

The busienss would be run from home initially though and I am not sure I would want to quit my job until i was sure it was a going concern. Thanks for the above post especially as I will contact business link now to develop it forward.

courtjester

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Phirefly

I agree with everyone else that its highly competative and people are already doing the things you propose.

What I will add is that I will definitely use an online service like housenetwork when we come to sell, but my only reservation with that would be the lack of local presence. They won't put my ad in the paper and there won't be a picture of my house for sale in a window on the high street in town.

If you could market yourself as a supplementary service pushing the local aspect I would consider a service like yours in addition to housenetwork if you could guarantee to get my property in the local paper and other, innovative local advertising. You'd then have a nice little niche covering a gap in services currently offered

courtjester

I think Business Link are definitely the first people you should contact for (free) advice - their purpose is to help people start up businesses and try and improve the 9 in 10 statistic for businesses that fail in their first year, (due mainly to poor research and inadequate planning).

If you do anything over and above offering advertising, you will be conducting estate agency work - again Business Link can provide detailed information about the legal side and practicalities for each industry sector - the government are about to introduce new laws regulating estate agents which will force all agents to belong to an approved redress scheme such as the Estate Agents Ombusdman which has professional negligence insurance implications (which can be very expensive).

Also, don't be over-optimistic about how customers or the public might react to new concepts - the public are notoriously set in their ways and resistant to change and the estate agents industry is a classic case in point.

Over 5000 complaints a year to the Ombudsman about dodgy agents and their practices, most people put agents at around the traffic warden level with regard to trust and hatred, everyone has a story about their 'experience' of using an agent and nobody accepts that agents commissions represent good value - YET most people in the UK still continue to use agents despite the effective alternatives (private sales services) which have been available online for many years. This type of inertia needs to be regarded seriously when offering something different, so don't base your plans on expecting massive interest in the first few weeks.

The point is you have to be realistic, not hopeful.

Certainly, you should not give up the day job as it were, but therein lies one of the main problems - if you don't put all your energies into a new business and most importantly from a customer service point of view, you are not available to answer the phone during the day, you will find it almost impossible to convey confidence in your service, without which customers simply will not use you. So it is very much a catch 22 situation.

There are plenty of examples (200 or so) of this already on the market - this is why there are so many small property websites getting nowhere - they are all 'hobby' sites offering little or no real service to potential customers. Would you trust the marketing of your biggest asset to someone working part-time from their back-bedroom...?

You should take a look at the established players and consider seriously whether you could compete - try googling for "sell my house" which will bring up the leading national contenders (ignore the sponsored ads on the top /right as these mainly relate to the 'buy-my-house-quick' services which are another story altogether... :cool: