How to sell your home and pay just £1 in estate agent fees
On a £500,000 house, home owners may pay a high street estate agent upward of £10,000 to market it for sale.
Now, there’s a new kid in town: a website called Cubbyhole is offering to market a property for 30 days for just £1.
Peter Lampe, the chief executive, described it as “the Autotrader for houses”, and “the Google of buying and selling property”.
After the 30 days is up, the fee to sell the house through Cubbyhole will rise to £60 per month.
High-street estate agents in Londonpocketed £1.1bn in fees last year, according to HouseSimple.com, but across the country they are under increasing pressure from online upstarts such as Purplebricks, HouseSimple and eMoov. Around 5pc of sellers use these sites to market their homes for sale, and demand for them is growing.
These websites will charge between £345 and more than £600 to list with them. In exchange they will list houses on property portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla, which get millions of hits every day.
However, the houses that are sold through Cubbyhole will not be on these portals. It aims to be the third main go-to site when buying and selling property, helped by a massive advertising campaign.
Mr Lampe, who has no prior experience in the property industry, said that the low entry price would encourage people to try Cubbyhole's service.
“A lot of people will put it on as a punt. I went out for an Indian meal the other day and it was £60. Someone might put it on just to see if it will sell,” he said.
Cubbyhole will provide a ‘for sale’ sign to put outside the building and list it on its site, but it is up to the seller to carry out viewings, take photographs, and value the property.
t will provide listings of local services necessary to buying and selling a home, such as solicitors, builders and conveyancers, and it will soon start listing houses from major house builders such as Taylor Wimpey and Bovis.
Any resulting sale will still be subject to the usual stamp duty and solicitor charges.
“I had the idea over a beer a year ago,” said Mr Lampe. “My friend sold his house by putting up a sign in the lounge window saying ‘house for sale’.”
“We’re not trying to change the industry,” he added. “We don’t want to compete with Rightmove and Zoopla or estate agents, we just want to say there’s a new way of doing things.”
Cubbyhole's £1 offer starts this weekend.
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