Early nerves

It’s been a week since the advert for my flat went live online and so far it’s been silence in cyber space.

Of course seven days is nothing and I should not get frantic but I will be gutted if I have to eat my words and go crawling to an estate agent.

Last night this fear motivated me to register my property on every single website offering a free listing service.

I also decided to put my property on eBay – not as an auction – I am not that desperate yet - but as an advert. I put up in bold letters at the top of the description: "THIS IS NOT AN AUCTION. ALL BIDS WILL BE CANCELLED". I then invited people to call me if they wanted to arrange a viewing.

I thought eBay might be a great way to market my property until I got to the payment section. eBay doesn’t tell you until right at the end of the process but if you select the "property" category it automatically adds £35 to the listing price.

I thought this was a little steep for an unproven service so I decided to try an experiment. I put my property in a random category so the posting would cost me just 87p, and put the keywords "property", "house" and "flat" into my title description.

The homes for sale in the property section of eBay seem to get an average of about between 400 and 500 hits so I will see how many hits my advert gets and let you know whether it is worth spending the extra £35.

Comments

[Antoni O]

Early days to be concerned but perhaps you should be rethinking your approach. E-bay may be terrific for many things but it's maybe not the perfect vehicle for this transaction.

First, if you haven't done this already, ask yourself: "Who is my buyer likely to be and where does he / she live right now?"

Then, when refining your approach to selling your property keep in mind two words: REACH and FREQUENCY.

To be effective any medium you choose must reach the people you feel are qualified prospective buyers and they need to see your message a number of times. In other words, think about that second word — frequency. One advertisement in a national glossy magazine may sound just the ticket for some things (not that you are going this route) but likely won't reach the people you are trying to impress. And the chance of them seeing a one-time insertion is possibly also remote.

So . . . . identify the various options before you and then simply equate the potential for a satisfactory result against the costs. Sometimes the best value is not the cheapest thing on the shelf and perhaps a local agent with a client list could be the way to go. On the other hand maybe lady luck with smile on you and someone just around the corner will respond to your free listings. Best of luck.