Perhaps the single biggest reason why homeowners have traditionally used an estate agent to sell their home, rather than do it themselves, relates purely to marketing - getting the property details in front of a sufficiently large number of buyers to achieve a sale. Nevertheless, there is in fact no legal requirement to use an agent at all.

Even under a "sole agency" agreement, there is nothing to prevent a homeowner from advertising and selling the property privately...

...with no liability to pay commission if he /she ultimately finds a buyer without the help of their agent. Since the introduction of the Unfair Contract Terms Act, it is very rare now to find the term Sole Selling Rights in an estate agent's consumer contract, meaning that individuals are free to market the property themselves - even where they have appointed a sole agent*.

The internet provides the perfect medium for the DIY homeseller to advertise his or her home at very low cost. Surveys have shown that more buyers than ever (over 80%) are using the internet to search for properties for sale, so all you need is the means to get your home out there. But being on the internet by no means guarantees that the property advertised will actually be 'visible' to the many-millions of buyers now surfing the net for homes.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of sites that promote themselves as allowing a vendor to sell their home privately for little or no cost...

...but, before choosing a 'free to advertise' internet property service, homeowners need to consider carefully what they are likely to get 'for nothing'. It can work - it is theoretically possible to connect to the right potential buyer - but the fact is that this remains an unlikely possibility with many of the sites available.

The problem is that most 'free' sites are poorly marketed (due to inadequate budgets) and rely either on advertising for their profit (which gets in the way of the message and can be offputting to buyers) or worse, selling-on registered users' e-mail addresses to junk mailing services - again this is likely to put off the majority of buyers searching for property from using such sites - the very target audience a seller needs. The most well-known 'free to advertise' internet property portal, relied for its profits upon selling its customer mailing list. Despite substantial backing which allowed it a multi-million pound advertising budget, it was forced to withdraw its free service, because it was unable to make a profit on that basis (!). Not entirely unexpected.

Many sites offer to list homes for the do-it-yourself seller, with photographs, for sale boards and other bells & whistles supplied for various fees - so how do you choose? Like any marketing, it's all about EFFECTIVE VISIBILITY - just being on the net is not enough in itself - to stand any chance of being noticed your property must be in the RIGHT PLACE and WELL PRESENTED.

Look first for a site which offers nationwide service to sellers anywhere in the UK and, most importantly, is able to attract buyers in all areas of the UK. Consider how well the property particulars are presented. How easy is it to find and search the website database? Is 'real person' telephone support provided? Are calls made on a freephone number (0800) or charged at national rate (0870 numbers - the site makes money on your phone call...)? How easy is it to obtain further information or ask questions, are queries handled swiftly and efficiently and staff helpful and knowledgeable? Is the website well-designed, attractive and easy to use thus encouraging buyers to return again and again? How well connected is the site to the property market in general? How long has the service been established and how professional is it by appearance and in practice?

Don't expect much in the way of service or response to your advertising on a site, if you pay nothing or very little. Or is that just common sense?

Some companies offer to build simple websites dedicated to just your property, in order to advertise it for sale on the web. This is probably a costly waste of time unless you have time on your hands to actively market the website yourself. The internet property world is an extremely crowded one and search-engines /directories may not find and categorise a new website for months (if at all), so chances are few buyers will ever get to see your dedicated website. Better to piggy-back on the multi-million pound marketing budgets of the industry’s biggest players by using an established property service.

Most internet buyers are now being channelled by massive TV and press marketing campaigns to a handful of household name high profile property-search services, one of the biggest being FISH4 - these are central or 'portal' databases of property for sale listed by subscribing companies. The Little House Company has very low cost arrangements to publish customer properties directly on over 500 partner sites and offers homeowners highly effective advertising on what is now the leading property portal network in the UK.

We charge a fixed fee to list any property from just £89 with no time limit and nothing more to pay. Advertising on our entire portal network costs just £135. Compared to one-off advertising (say in a local paper), our service offers huge ongoing exposure in the mainstream market at very low relative cost.

An interesting point revealed by market surveys is the fact that buyers actually prefer to deal with the seller direct, rather than through an agent - a survey by Halifax found that buyers have greater confidence in what a seller tells them about the property than what an agent says.

How does our advertising work for vendors?

The Little House Company is a direct advertising service providing self-sell marketing tools at very low cost - that is WE don't sell your property YOU do - using our marketing reach, presentation and associate publishing arrangements.

We do not publish your complete address or name, only the contact details you wish to use, so you have control over who gets to view your home and who doesn't. You take responsibility for selling the property whilst we take responsibility for your details reaching the widest buying audience. You provide the photographs and property description, you deal with buyers direct (forwarded on to you through our website) you arrange viewings and handle all negotiations.

We manage the presentation of your property advertising and its exposure on the mainstream services. We do NOT give advice on valuation, price or prepare descriptions, nor do we offer any agency services, although we will assist you to present your details well and offer recommendations for changes which we feel will improve the appearance and effectiveness of the listing. We provide free support and service throughout the period of advertising.

It's just like placing a private ad in your local paper, but MUCH better, more targeted and effective.

Our advertising fees are fixed, there is no commission or anything else to pay on the sale and advertising with us remains in place until the property is sold - there is no time limit.

The Little House Company properties are widely published on the leading UK property portal websites like FISH4 and well ranked in major search engines like Google - in all the advertising goes on to over 500 UK websites, including 4Homes (Channel4) and 250 local newspaper websites around the UK.

Once your property is registered and payment received by us, it takes just 1 working day to post your details on our partner network. Online registration and editing of property details can be made anytime 24 hrs a day. Photographs can be added directly via the online editing facility, or posted to us for scanning. Network listings are managed and updated automatically by our systems, so there is only one record to worry about. Free customer support is available during office hours, Monday to Friday, to help you set up the advertising correctly or to deal with any problems.

A detailed practical guide is provided as part of the package to help you get the most out of using our service.

Statistics? - our properties reach over 3 million buyers a month through our various publishing arrangements. Few (if any) competing services offer the level of EFFECTIVE exposure that our unique network provides for ALL of our customers, which we estimate to be some 5 times greater than our closest competitor. If you price your property fairly, you will get a good response from our advertising - if not, you have the facilities to edit and modify the details to refine the advertising until you get the right response level. Once we generate the enquiries, the rest is up to you - as stated above, we don't sell the property, you do, so ultimately success is in your hands (but we help a bit!).

Our main SELLERS SECTION page has FULL information about our fees, advertising network and two simple guides to our fast and easy online registration process :

Guide to ADDING a property
Guide to PHOTOGRAPHS.

See our FAQ (frequently asked questions) page for further information about our service or click on CUSTOMER COMMENTS for a selection of unsolicited testimonials from our many satisfied advertisers.