Visum online estate agents

jaydeeuk1

Ok, first annoyance.
When you request details through rightmove, you get an email from rightmove and then an email from visum. However, we don't get the details of the person making the enquiry until they've clicked the email from visum... So if it goes to junk, or they assume its spam or something, we'll never know they were interested. I've had a couple of friends request info just to see how long it took to get through, and now I know why we didn't get a response.

We've changed our advert to put an instruction in bold, just seems a bit (ok, quite a bit) of a flaw. Don't know if its the same for all online estate agents or just these. Not allowed to put our contact details in the ad so can't really get round it.

Anyway, if anyone has any feedback, here's the ad:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53342191.html

Lokolo

Just a couple of things, the photos seem quite short (i.e. you can't get a feel of the room as you can't see the whole thing). For example, the bathroom picture of the bath, its just a zoomed in picture of the bath.... none of the pictures actually give me a feel of say, the bathroom.

The other thing that annoys me is that the room sizes aren't on the floor plan.

jaydeeuk1

Thanks, must admit most floor plans I've looked at didn't have the room sizes on so we pur ours in the listing.

The photo isn't zoomed in, will take photo from a different angle, perhaps high up looking down.

Lokolo

Just for example, mines up for sale as well

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-58145615.html

And you can see in my photos its clear to see all the rooms, full height and width. Gives a better perspective imo. And on my floor plan its clear to see how big each room is. But thats just me

jaydeeuk1

Well I've had the featured listing for 2 or 3 days now, honestly thought we might have had one enquiry, if not a request for a viewing. Photos imo look ok, bathroom perhaps the exception, its priced well for the area in Belper, nothing needs doing to the property really and its a nice area. When we've enquired about a house the day its hit the market we're usually the 10th or so to ask, and a lot sell within a week.

The 2 enquiries we've had so far which appeared on day of listing haven't bothered responding, although at least one of them sounds a bit 'spammy'.

Am I being impatient, unrealistic, crap advert? Genuinely surprised we haven't had one good lead looking at some of the naff looking houses that have sold for more recently...

If we get nothing by wed/thurs week which is when the featured listing runs out, we'll end the experiment and just go for a regular estate agent.

jaydeeuk1

Just giving an update. After the initial barren period we had 3 people ring up yesterday wanting a viewing so had them all that evening as well a couple for the weekend.
One rang up an hour ago with an offer we've accepted as they sold the day before to a FTB. I've emailed the vendors of the property we're interested in and thats all accepted and we're moving forward on that.

I'd say the experiment was quite a success, and dare I say it, enjoyable. I don't think an estate agent could sell our house as well as us, and rather than costing us £1430 in fees, we've paid £207. I know its not all set in stone yet, the 'fun' is only beginning but the first part of selling was pretty painless. Whilst there are online conveyancers / solicitors, I'm not completely mental so will be sticking to someone local.

Hope this thread helps anyone thinking of using visum or indeed any other estate agent, it really isn't that scary.

If anyone is interested I can post up screenshots of the 'internal' side so you can see how to add a property, list it etc.

I'm going to email them some feedback such as adding more instruction to people enquiring that they must click on the link in the email for us to get their contact details, and when we get an enquiry and arrange a viewing it would be useful to have a 'notes' area next to their name to say what time they're viewing, whether they're a FTB, with DIP, cash buyer etc.

But yeah, on the whole highly recommended.