Pay-as-you-go estate agency launches TV campaign...

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11 September 2015

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Pay-as-you-go estate agency launches TV campaign

An estate agency offering what it calls “pay as you go” fees for vendors is launching its first TV and London underground advertising campaigns.

Online agency HouseSimple - which recently secured a £5m investment from Carphone Warehouse founder Sir Charles Dunstone - claims to have sold over £1 billion worth of properties to date, and says it saves sellers on average £1.2m in fees every month.

Its latest approach is to allow sellers can market their homes for as little as £9 per week.

“We felt the time was right to launch HouseSimple on television. The online estate agency sector is growing rapidly but there is still uncertainty amongst home sellers about selling online” says HouseSimple chief executive Alex Gosling.

“We’ve recently changed our fee model to make it more accessible for consumers to try selling their property online, but it’s important we get that message out to as many homeowners as possible” he says.

Here is the agency’s TV ad.

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- Chris Arnold
- 11 September 2015 06:28 AM
Will this advert, or even this business model change the public perception of estate agents? It's not all about the money to most vendors. It's about having faith and trust in the agency's ability to do a great job for the homeowner. Not everyone wants to shop at Pondland. Most understand that cheap comes at a price. We don't look for the cheapest lawyer, we look for the best and this agency doesn't claim to be that!

- Trevor Mealham
- 11 September 2015 08:00 AM
The sold boards shown would be illegal as they don't have 'stc' on them as required under the 'Town and Country Planning Act' , whoever signed off the commercial should know estate agency law. As such - Worrying.

Budget agents often cost sellers more than they save as they don't network with other agents to bring more buyers to the table. Their fees are too low to B2B

Based on many agents charging 1% their £5k plus average savings seem consumer misleading based on average UK house prices.

- jeremy clarke
- 11 September 2015 09:40 AM
Is there an online agent that promotes itself in any way other than cheap fees? Having been in the business for almost £30 years this just seems to be the latest gimmick in a long line. I remember the days in traditional estate agency when colour photos arrived and we "charged" vendors for the privilege effectively increasing our fees; after a while the weaker agents caved in and fees were eroded again by including the photos. How long before these budget barrow boys erode their £9 a week fee by chucking in the boards and plans to "compete" with the High Street Agents??

- Sceptical As Always
- 11 September 2015 09:44 AM
John Ruskin once said: “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When
you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay
too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you
bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The
common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a
lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well
to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will
have enough to pay for something better.”