subject: Online Estate Agents - A Web Developers Perspective [print this page] If you are looking to sell your home but haven't decided on an estate agent yet, perhaps the first thing you should think about is which type of estate agent to choose? Online or Traditional.
The all important factor when selling a house is recognising that buyers tend to find sellers not the other way around, so how do most buyers find homes? Newspapers, Window Shopping and Online.
Before I found my house I did indeed walk around the high street and ask agents for details on properties in my price range, I found the experience quite humiliating as one agent in particular laughed at my budget and said I wouldn't find anything for that sort of money, he was wrong a couple of weeks later I stumbled across a house whilst surfing the internet I found my home on RightMove which is an online property portal. So in my experience it was the internet that connected me to the estate agent selling the house I wanted. So I contacted the estate agent, viewed the house a couple of times and made my offer - which was accepted!
The traditional estate agent did a good job, there were no hiccups and within 3 months I had moved in but then so he should as the seller paid him over 2000 to sell his home.
Looking further at my experience I realised that I had never even stepped inside the shop of the estate agents, if i had any questions I would call or email them which leads me onto the question why do estate agents need a high street presence? I found my property online and never visited the agents premises.
Having some friends that were traditional estate agents I knew that the main overheads for them were newspaper advertising and premium high street property rental neither of which attracted me to my house.
Being a web developer by trade I tried to convince my friends to start off an online estate agents, the response was negative "it wouldn't work, people like to see a local face" and as such my idea for an online estate agents never got off the ground...
That was in 2008, and now 2 years a difficult two years for estate agents their opinions on online estate agents have changed entirely. So much so that I was approached by a traditional agent and asked to build them an online estate agent site.
What with the recession and fall in property prices some people are almost forced to sell their homes and don't want to pay the traditional premiums associated with traditional agents.
Online estate agents don't need to charge so much for selling a house since their overheads are so much lower, they are still on the end of the phone when you need them and in most cases the selling experience surpasses that of traditional estate agents no more limits of waiting until the estate agents is open truly online agents are open 24/7.
So since April of this year I have worked on 247 Estate Agents website. The site is due for official launch in October 2010 and I look forward to building up a new modern estate agency solution.
I will keep you posted as to its success!
Online Estate Agents - A Web Developers Perspective
