Online Estate Agents | HOW to SELL Your House & SAVE Money!

How to Sell Your House Fast & Save Money on Estate Agency Fees!

One of the many things the internet has given us is eBay – the perfect place to find a buyer for just about anything.

So something similar should have happened in the property market, right? Buyers and sellers transacting directly – no more expensive estate agents?

In fact, selling privately is probably harder today than it ever has been. Not only is the housing market very slow, but most buyers go straight to the major portals property portals when searching... which leads them to the estate agents. The proportion of homes being sold privately today is actually less than it was in the 1970s!

House Hop - Online Estate Agents

Trying to level the playing field for the consumer is House Hop – an online estate agent offering fixed price estate agency for just £397 plus vat.

Launched in September 2009, House Hop started out as a private sale website before adding online estate agency earlier this year.

“The difficulty with a private sale only model”, explained John Tighe, the founder of House Hop, “is that you can’t get onto Rightmove and the other major property portals as they have banned private sellers.”

John explained that the decision to add online estate agency was born out of frustration at not being able to give users what they wanted. “We had so many people asking us if they could get onto Rightmove, and we felt as disappointed as they did when we kept having to say no”.

Not allowing private sellers to list on the major portals is even an issue that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) looked into in their 2010 report of the state of competition in the UK housing market.

Unfortunately for private sellers, while the OFT recognised that there was a problem they stopped short of invoking the Competition Act – stating that they hoped that the market would provide a solution.

Reading between the lines, it seems that the OFT were hoping that a major player such as Google or Tesco would come into the market and shake things up.

So far things haven’t turned out that way. In 2007 Tesco launched a private sale website only to abandon it within weeks after howls of complaint from estate agents. And in 2010 Google launched its own UK property portal to great excitement – causing Rightmove’s share price to drop by 10% in a single day. Google scrapped the service in February this year due to “low usage”.

For the time being at least, the major property portals still have things their own way.

This means that if you want to sell your property without paying the full high street agent price (around £4,000 for a typical property once you add vat) the only realistic alternative is an online estate agent.

So what do you get with an online estate agent?

Well, for £397 plus vat, House Hop will list your property on Rightmove, Zoopla, Find a Property, Prime Location, Globrix and Nestoria. In other words all the major portals, plus a host of smaller portals as well.

And despite making a massive saving, you still get everything that you would expect from a high street agent – the only difference is that you conduct your own viewings.

House Hop’s package includes a virtual tour, professional photos, floorplans and a “For Sale” board. House Hop will also help you value your property, arrange the viewings, negotiate on your behalf and help progress your sale.

To find out more visit House Hop

Summary

House Hop is an online estate agency covering the whole of the UK.

Clients save an average of £3,427 compared to using a high street estate agent and benefit from a fully professional service, including valuation guidance, floorplans, photos, negotiations, help at every stage of the process and a free EPC.

House Hop lists on all the major property portals including Rightmove, Zoopla, Find a Property and Prime Location.