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A portal which promises to revolutionise how agents and buyers use the internet to identify sales and rental properties launches to the industry this week - with a pledge that listings will be free for five years.

Houser.co.uk, set up by internet entrepreneur Rocky Mirza, works like this.

Individual agents' branches who have signed up to Houser upload their stock to their own websites and, automatically, the inventory appears on the new portal as well. So far, Mirza says some 5,150 agents have signed up with the free-for-five-years promise.

At the same time internet crawlers' will be scouring the web and social media for details and images of other properties for sale and to let, including those from agents who have not signed up, and including those being sold privately via internet small ads' and via social media.

All of these properties will then be added to Houser and will be visible to the public, with agents' or sellers' details added.

Within a short time it will easily outstrip Rightmove and Zoopla because agents will see its effectiveness and know it is free to use says Mirza, who describes himself as one of the world's top 10 internet domain name owners, selling them on to the highest bidder.

Mirza believes Houser will eventually become the go to' site for would-be buyers because it would ultimately list all of those from agents and those for sale privately - so long as the seller puts the details somewhere on the web so they can be discovered - crawled' - by the new portal.

The properties of agents who have signed up will have more prominence than those whose properties are crawled' and Mirza says agents who wish to pay can obtain even greater prominence or can use the property listing to promote additional services.

But he insists the unique selling point of his portal will be the free basic listings for every agent.

Mirza says the site - which currently has a holding home page in place - will become available to signed-up agents later this week, and will then be revealed to the public with thousands of listings from next week, beginning January 12.

All areas of London will be covered at first and, eventually, all of the UK too says Mirza.

Advantages to buyers include not only the centralisation of listings from a range of other portals and private sellers, but also a simple and automated viewing scheduler' service.

Whereas now a would-be buyer has to contact each individual agent selling suitable homes in an area to arrange viewings, the online scheduler will state the purchaser's availability and property requirements, plus chosen area, and will then allow multiple viewings from mutliple agents to be arranged online.

Mirza is keeping tight-lipped about how he will make the site financially viable given that he says charging agents to list their properties is a broken business model. But he also says the site will ultimately be so comprehensive it will attract advertising from industry and allied service providers.

Comments

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    Been a bit quiet on the Houser front has it not. What's happening with this

    • 24 February 2015 19:08 PM
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    "HomeBoard searches hundreds of estate websites to bring you the latest properties first"

    Oh, dear - ANOTHER scraper portlet (can't really call it a portal, can you...) that will no doubt be placed on OTM's "competing" list...

    • 18 January 2015 12:10 PM
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    TheHomeBoard (www.thehomeboard.co.uk) is a similar site. Maybe covers only London but its waaaay better then this site. No images, no map, no thank you.

    • 17 January 2015 01:19 AM
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    Just tried a search in London and it crashed twice - CRAP site

    • 06 January 2015 20:32 PM
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    Domain trolls are speculators that don't serve any useful purpose.

    • 06 January 2015 00:56 AM
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    How is it free for 5 years when even if you don't sign up... your stock will be on there anyway :(

    • 05 January 2015 14:30 PM
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    Tut tut tut

    • 05 January 2015 11:16 AM
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    The freemium model works this way. The majority of its features are free and once it has enough users it banks on making money from additional features, perks and benefits. That's how these guys will be making revenue.

    • 05 January 2015 10:14 AM
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    @Rob - I am thinking these guys are going to go for traffic first and then work on making money from it. I guess in the end it depends on how deep their pockets are.

    • 05 January 2015 10:10 AM
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    That's the thing I'm sceptical about. It's all very nice offering something for free and getting plenty of traffic, but what's the catch How is this going to make a return for Mirza

    • 05 January 2015 10:08 AM
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    Not sure whether this model can work but since its free it should draw traffic and agents. I wonder how these guys intend to make money though, surely all this couldn't exactly be free.

    • 05 January 2015 10:07 AM
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    Pie in the sky idea that will never work or stroke of genius My head says this is a vanity project from an internet entrepreneur in an already crowded market, but I wait to be proved wrong.

    • 05 January 2015 10:06 AM
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    Crawling listings and getting them on their site is not a bad idea as long as they can keep them updated. I for one don't think there is any harm in trying out a new portal, especially if its a no risk offer like this one.

    • 05 January 2015 10:04 AM
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    Properties spidered from websites are not new. The reason that decent portals don't use them is because they can't reasonably be updated quickly enough.

    Using spiders to scrape data in this way is also against the T&Cs of many web hosts.

    I've spoken to a few knowledgeable domain name investors and none have heard of Mirza.

    Houser is going nowhere.

    • 05 January 2015 09:36 AM
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    Do us a favour, please. Another week, another portal that is going to change our lives. Come on boys and girls and please find something of more relevance to print.

    • 05 January 2015 08:54 AM
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