SteveG

Done

Arhh ok yeah that makes sense. I'm not sure about your experience with RightMove but mine is that RightMove is soooooo slow. Also if you say I'm looking for a property in and give a post code and then say "exact area" .. the results are rubbish and you get properties miles away from the post code in question. It's a shame I haven't got the marketing budget as er.. I'm not going to mention the site (see above ) but I can get it a lot closer and I'm sure my team can write any cool features people come up with. It also looks like they have got yet another site update due to be launched. Perhaps we could make a free site for "the people" but I don't think my wife would be impressed. This is a very cool tool (and nothing to do with me!) http://www.property-bee.com/ it basically allows you to keep tabs on property description and price fluctuations. It only works on Firefox I think and I guess has already been talked about on this site somewhere.

Well I’m genuinely impressed with your detective skills Sherlock! Thanks for the telling your friends, more than happy to do it for free as well. I don’t want to go off the property thread too much so contact me via the contact link above and we can trade war stories ;-) The offer is genuine for the free adverts on Fish4, Channel4 Homes etc .. but I can only afford to really give away 10 property postings, all I ask is if you like the service then tell your friends .. why give Estate Agents £1000’s for pretty much nothing when most sales come from sites like RightMove, FindAProperty, Fish4Homes etc .. Interestingly on that note RightMove and FindAProperty wouldn’t allow me to advertise properties on their site as RoofAndWalls isn’t an estate agent, are they against private sellers sites? I’m sure as time goes on and more and more people turn to selling their property on private sellers’ sites like RoofAndWalls .. and more EA’s go out of business they’ll change their tune. As mentioned we’re renting a 4 bedroom (well it was advertised as a 4 bedroom but it’s more like 2 bedroom and 2 box rooms) house. It’s a new build and there are a few left for sale for over £500,000 but in today’s market you’d have to be mad to pay that. Also, the build quality isn’t great. I know new builds settle and you get a few cracks but there are cracks everywhere and some of them are 3mm in width!

Hi Sherlock, I’m impressed :-) The post is all true except that I didn’t use the voucher code and the story of how I advertised my property on the site is even more involved. I help run a small software company and as we’ve done a number of property sites in the past and I thought well why not create a private sellers site as we’re getting no where selling our flat with an agent, so I developed RoofAndWalls. Just to prove it here’s the flat but you won’t see it via the Search on the site as we’ve now completed and yes it was our flat!  http://www.roofandwalls.co.uk/content/view...5b-38b0757c867b If only we could afford a PR advertising company and the way the posts evolved wasn’t planned but my original post was a valid posting but it was also to aid traffic to the site, I have to admit and why not if it works? The voucher code will still work for anyone who’s interested and as a gesture of good will I’ll waver the cost completely for the first 10 readers of this article. Just email me your RoofAndWalls property link via http://www.roofandwalls.co.uk/content/enquiry.aspx and then I’ll upload it to the other sites for free. I’m not sure how publicly I can keep tabs on how many free slots are left, I guess I could create a new page on RoofAndWalls or perhaps update this page (ideally putting links to the properties that have been posted by users but I’ll probably get banned or something). Ideas welcome! ;-) Sorry guys I got a bit carried away but it is a true story, it's just my site. Great work Sherlock I have to admit!

Yeah, good point. I think one big lesson we learned was to just get it on the market ASAP. We wanted to sell last year but thought we'd do the place up first .. and then sell in the New Year .. big mistake. Oh well you live and learn.

Hi Rettah, Thanks! It was down in Tyttenhanger (which is about 3 miles outside of St. Albans), we bought it for £299,999 6 years ago and we didn't make any money on it really (well about £25 but we didn't buy it as an investment) but I guess at least we didn't loose any money! The EA's must be finding it really hard especially with all these Private Sellers Sites around. We advertised on the site for free originally and then took out a paid advert (as we thought noone is going to visit RoofAndWalls looking for a flat as hardly anyone has heard of the site!) . We did it for a couple of months using a voucher code a friend gave us coupon-102008, which meant we could advertise on Fish4 Homes, Channel4 Homes and loads of others and it only cost us £20 inc VAT for 2 months (using the voucher code, which may not work anymore). £20 or over £5,000 in commission .. mmmmm Yeah St. Albans is exensive, too many flats and too many people!

My wife and I have just completed (woohoo) on the sale of our flat and what a year it’s been. We originally put it on the market back in January and had 4 valuations - £360,000,£380,000,£380,00 & £425,000 (an amazing £65,000 difference!). Anyway not to be greedy we decided to try and sell it for £380,000. At the time (well in our eyes) we didn’t expect the property market to crash but even then we thought we were playing it “safe”. Anyway, after the first few months the estate agent only managed to get a couple of people through the door and so we decided to drop the price to £359,000. Another month went by and we then changed estate agent as it wasn’t working out. In the mean time the press (who really haven’t helped the situation) just reported doom and gloom. We finally dropped the price to £345,000 and actually sold the place through a private sellers site called http://www.roofandwalls.co.uk for £332,000 .. so that’s £93,000 off the highest valuation! On that note the estate agent said we couldn't sell through RoofAndWalls but they were wrong as they (the EA) weren’t classified as the Sole Seller (otherwise we would have been liable for the fees!) So we accepted the offer and it still took 3 months to complete and that’s with no chain involved!! I’m sure if you got everyone involved in a room for the afternoon we could have sorted it all out there and then! Anyway, we’re out of the property game for a while, renting .. it’s the future! Good luck to anyone who’s selling!