DIY house-marketing, and advertising online

[Harold Davis]

I'm marketing my house myself, advertising it

- with a sign (there are quite a lot of other houses on the market around here, so people who view them are seeing it),

- with an ad in the local rag (haven't had much interest from that yet, perhaps because it's next to ads from firms offering to buy houses at 70% of market value from people in big debt problems), and

- with a couple of ads in local shops.

The big property websites (Zoopla, Rightmove, Home.co.uk) don't accept ads from individuals.

There are various middlemen who will put an ad "for you" on these sites, so long as they can control aspects of your marketing and sale - measuring your rooms for you (at your expense), taking calls (ditto), presumably also trying to get a slice of any mortgage action too.

Houseweb.co.uk seems OK on that front (i.e. they don't do all that), but they only offer to get your ad onto Home.co.uk, which AIUI is meta and is my site of preference when searching for properties but I suspect it doesn't get as much traffic as the other two.

I don't know of any way to get onto Zoopla or Rightmove without giving a lot of control to an agent.

Then there are small sites which will take your ?200 and put some crappy ad on their site that no-one goes to, which of course aren't worth dealing with.

So...the above is where I'm at. I'm looking for advice on getting an ad on one or more of the big sites, while keeping control of all aspects - i.e. I take calls, make appointments, negotiate, etc.

Thanks in advance for any help with this!

Harry

[harry]

How about this?

[Harold Davis]

harry wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Thanks Harry. I've dropped them an email. I think they will only put an ad on the big sites so long as they can control aspects of the marketing and sale:

- valuing

- measuring rooms

- involving themselves in booking viewings

- taking calls

- receiving offers and trying to get a slice of any mortgage action

(in their words: "every time that an offer is made we take key information from the proposed buyer/tenant and then an offer check process is conducted by a third party to ensure they are able to proceed with the purchase") but I've given them a chance to convince me they wouldn't do any of that but would simply accept a couple of hundred pounds for putting an ad written by me onto Rightmove and Zoopla, which seems easy money.

I expect they'll tell me "no". I also expect they'll come out with some bullshit reasons. But I'll report back here whatever their answer is.

Harry

[Cash]

Harry,

One of my neighbours sold his house within two months using this site:

Might be worth a look.

Cash

[RJH]

Indeed - I used something similar a while back for about £500. It was fine, got a buyer quite quickly due to the Rightmove etc exposure. They were happy to use my photos, and I could edit the advert as I liked.

But always difficult to tell whether the price was better than a high street agent might have got.

[Capitol]

IME the high st agent will always get the lowest price you will accept. I put the agents price up by 20% when I sold the last house and achieved it.

[Harold Davis]

RJH wrote in news:n0fm3h$2tm$ [e-mail]:

Can you remember which company?

Harry

[RJH]

Jane Earl - who I see have gone bust. They had a deal similar to emoov's £595 pay up front.

Thinking about it a bit more, they were very good and the charge was lower (£250 perhaps) - to the point I couldn't work out how they made a profit.

I think if you value a local agent with all that involves, probably best to go with them. But overall I find the whole business grubby and would rather avoid contact as much as I can. The £1000+ saving is a bonus.

[Harold Davis]

RJH wrote in news:n0gtu2$ig0$ [e-mail]:

Same here - it is disgustingly grubby. I've had 17 enquiries if only 3 viewings, so not doing completely badly. Just it would be nice to get onto Rightmove, Zoopla or home.co.uk, but I haven't yet found an agent that offers ONLY that. Their marginal cost for putting an ad onto one of those sites is probably very small.

Harry

[tim.....]

If they (the intermediately) charge everybody the margining rate they would never cover their own costs