Estate agents are to be offered a white-labelled ‘crowdfunding’ option as a way of selling properties.

Ben Grove, head of crowdfunding platform Property Moose UK, said he is hoping to launch it next year, and that agents he has spoken to so far have reacted positively.

He envisages the product as being part of an agent’s armoury: while most properties would sell through private treaty and others go through auction, vendors could also be offered a ‘crowdfunding’ option whereby the property could be sold to a number of joint investors.

Agents in this scenario would effectively be acting as introducers to Property Moose UK, and Grove believes there could be up to three introducer agents per strategic territory, across the country.

Grove has had a substantial 16-year track record as a provider to estate agents.

Before his current appointment, he was managing director at EstatesDirect, the online agent of which Poundland founder Steve Smith was chairman.

Grove co-founded EstatesDirect with Darren Richards. The team behind EstatesDirect had big ambitions for it, including an IPO. It also embarked on a series of crowd-funding.

However last year, Smith stepped down, as did Richards and another director.

This year, it was announced that EstatesDirect was to become part of the PP Online Group of Companies, and would merge with MakeUrMove, “with aspirations to become the largest online letting agent in the country”.

However, the EstatesDirect website now seems to have disappeared and according to Grove the domain name has expired. He does not consider EstatesDirect to have been a failure, despite what he describes as the “onslaught of Purplebricks”.

Grove said: “You can’t say it was a failure, although the spirit continues under a different brand and was sold to a fund, which clearly saw value in it. The new management team have the skills and experience to take the combined businesses to the next level.”

In his new role, Grove – who has also worked for the likes of property portals Propertyindex and Propertyfinder – plans to grow Property Moose UK through new investor and agency partnerships.

Property Moose was one of the first property crowdfunding platforms, allowing investors to become landlords by buying into buy-to-let properties from just £10.

They are also able to share rental income and benefit from any capital gain when the property is sold. They can also trade their shares.

It is an enormous business, with some 26,000 members in over 90 countries.

The platform recently raised £850,000 in equity funding from a Guernsey-based asset management firm, bringing the total raised to over £2m.

 www.propertymoose.co.uk