Developers have shown strong support for a portal that bans agents.
The iProperty Company is free for developers and private sellers and landlords, and says there has been an “explosion”in interest in private sales.
It has formal backing from the NHBC and is used by a number of big house builders including Barratt Homes and Persimmon.
The iProperty Company, co-founded by former Swinton Insurance boss Brian Blake, launched with NHBC endorsement this year.
Yesterday the site said that it had £2.4bn worth of property listed.
Altogether there are 8,549 UK properties – but only 83 of these are private sales listings. The site yesterday said that the average saving for private sellers in London would be £7,500 – and more in some other places where it operates.
Alongside the UK listings, iProperty has users in countries such as the Bahamas, Cape Verde, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.
John Candia, chief executive of the iProperty Company, said: “This year has seen an explosion in interest among house sellers who are looking to cut out the costs associated with estate agents.
“With over £2bn worth of property available on our site, it is clear that the principle of selling direct to buyers is catching on.
“Next year has the potential to be one of great change, with traditional bricks and mortar estate agents coming under great pressure from platforms enabling buyers, sellers and renters to deal directly with each other.
“We will be starting the year off with a major announcement and I am looking forward to helping our members save thousands on unnecessary fees.”
Woohoo, 83 private listings? Not quite an explosion but nice the consumer has choice and all that. It's still odd they describe themselves as banning agents though, you cant be banned from somewhere you have no intention of goung can you? – Jonnie
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Now all they need is some traffic.
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'Flocking'? Is that really the word?
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Totally agree……Even the new homes is a tiny fraction (possibly 1-1.5%) of all that is on offer. Also……how many new homes are on with agents as well?…..quite a few if you look. I guess developers may use it as an outside chance of picking up a handful of leads …but nothing more. Most developers need a strong strategy for sales to keep banks/investors happy. Self listing on a site with little or no sales traffic would not, in most cases be acceptable to investors/banks.
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Yes, Mr Gillham, "flocking" is the perfect word, I think.
As in "Flocking disaster"; "Flocking waste of time"; the list of possibilities is endless… ;o)
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They all miss the point agency is not just about portal coverage full stop capital letter and move on.
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Searched for properties in my part of Gods country and there was sod all on it. In fairness it did give me the option of going 10 miles out to a new development. If http://www.iproperty.com has been going for the best part of a year, I'd be a bit worried if I was them that I'd never heard of them. An "Explosion"? More of a wet fart in my humble one. I just checked the spreadsheet to see how much we made out of developers in the last 5 years. It was FA.
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