First holidays, insurance, books and grocery shopping. Now property begins to maximise its online potential and there are some staggering savings to be made accordingly. Traipsing around travel agents checking prices and availability of holidays used to be a real chore. Similarly, your annual quest to find the best price for your car and home insurance used to make your fingers tired of 'doing the walking'.
Nothing ever has, or ever will, change our lives or our finances like the Internet: insurance, holidays, grocery shopping... all considerably cheaper, all considerably faster and all from the comfort of your sofa. The online world is full of sites like Last Minute, Direct Line, Confused, Go Compare and Compare the Market. These are all now household names, which isn't surprising since 37 million UK citizens regularly access the Internet every year. More than 40% of all books throughout the UK are purchased online, usually through Amazon.com. Online shopping is now pretty much the norm, and our social lives are heading that way too - what with Twitter and Facebook which now has over 250 million users.
Property is a late arrival to this worldwide online party. Rightmove, the UK's busiest property portal, now receives over 7 million unique visitors every month. As do the other three of the "big four" portals combined - FindaProperty, Prime Location, and Zoopla. It is clear now, that with over 95% of all inquiries about property in Britain today taking place via the Internet, property search is now firmly rooted online. Buyers have voted with their feet (as in they're not using them going up and down high streets looking at estate agents office windows for property details any more).
Online selling, however has taken a while to catch on. The whole estate agency industry has taken its sweet time to provide an online way of choosing an agent and getting your home listed on Rightmove and the like. Maybe it's because estate agency companies up and down the country are tied in to their "tradition" of spending a great deal of money on multiple branch offices - the cost of which is passed on to their clients in the form of ever increasing fees. Today's average selling fee in Britain is now 3400, according to the Office of Fair Trading.
The new alternative is something that is turning estate agency on its head and shaking it until all its ill gotten gains fall out of its pockets. eMoov are online estate agents that will do the same job as the High Street but for a fee of just 349 plus vat. That's a typical saving of 90% on traditional expensive estate agents. Go Compare, indeed...
Nothing ever has, or ever will, change our lives or our finances like the Internet: insurance, holidays, grocery shopping... all considerably cheaper, all considerably faster and all from the comfort of your sofa. The online world is full of sites like Last Minute, Direct Line, Confused, Go Compare and Compare the Market. These are all now household names, which isn't surprising since 37 million UK citizens regularly access the Internet every year. More than 40% of all books throughout the UK are purchased online, usually through Amazon.com. Online shopping is now pretty much the norm, and our social lives are heading that way too - what with Twitter and Facebook which now has over 250 million users.
Property is a late arrival to this worldwide online party. Rightmove, the UK's busiest property portal, now receives over 7 million unique visitors every month. As do the other three of the "big four" portals combined - FindaProperty, Prime Location, and Zoopla. It is clear now, that with over 95% of all inquiries about property in Britain today taking place via the Internet, property search is now firmly rooted online. Buyers have voted with their feet (as in they're not using them going up and down high streets looking at estate agents office windows for property details any more).
Online selling, however has taken a while to catch on. The whole estate agency industry has taken its sweet time to provide an online way of choosing an agent and getting your home listed on Rightmove and the like. Maybe it's because estate agency companies up and down the country are tied in to their "tradition" of spending a great deal of money on multiple branch offices - the cost of which is passed on to their clients in the form of ever increasing fees. Today's average selling fee in Britain is now 3400, according to the Office of Fair Trading.
The new alternative is something that is turning estate agency on its head and shaking it until all its ill gotten gains fall out of its pockets. eMoov are online estate agents that will do the same job as the High Street but for a fee of just 349 plus vat. That's a typical saving of 90% on traditional expensive estate agents. Go Compare, indeed...
About the Author:
Tired of paying high estate agent fees? Join the growing number of people turning to online estate agents eMoov.co.uk. eMoov will visit you to take full details of your house and then advertise it on all of the UK's top 25 property websites including Rightmove. Selling fees start at just 99. Never used an online estate agent? What are you waiting for...?
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