How Do I Find Tenants and Sell Property? You Need the Internet - But It is Becoming Dominated by the Big Portals

The internet has become ever more important as a resource for landlords looking for tenants. However, all the big property portals exclude landlords advertising directly (i.e. not through an agent)
So, if you go down the high street to find a letting agent to market your property, one of the first things you must ask today is which portal are they linked to. Indeed, it is reported in today’s news that 90% of house sales are advertised on the RightMove site (they also appear on others too, but it looks like RightMove is now the biggest) and it is thought that around 70 per cent of tenants now restrict their search entirely to the internet.
Christian Harper of Oliver Finn, an estate agency in Chiswick says “Many agents talk about marketing strategies (for letting property) but for many it just comes down to putting a property up on the big portals.”
The biggest portals are Prime Location and Right Move. In fact if you find a local letting agent that is not linked into at least one of these, you should seriously question why.
Others that have a significant presence are PropertyFinder, FindaProperty and Fish4Homes
PrimeLocation and RightMove have now become hugely successful businesses as their stock market ratings amply testify and any agent not on them is bound to struggle. But they are not cheap - typically they charge around £300 per month per branch per agent.
The bad news is that landlords cannot access most portals because they only accept ads from professional agents.
Some portals say this is to do with the restrictions imposed by the Property Misdescriptions Act which places an onus on the agent to have actually seen the property they are advertising to sell.
However, this is a bit misleading because the act doesn’t apply to property lettings at all (only property sales.)
The real truth is it’s because most portals have been built up by estate and letting agents (and in some cases owned by them) and they do not want to damage their own pitch.
However, there are some portals where landlords advertising direct can place their properties. One is www.gumtree.com which is good for London lettings – but not very good elsewhere. You can advertise here for free.
www.loot.com was a site that was free for years but now makes charges for adverts. However, neither Loot nor Gum Tree will get you on the big portals like RightMove though of course as they are quite powerful and give a steady flow of tenants in the capital – though they are less effective outside London.
Another alternative, though more expensive and where you can get on the big portals is to use a purely online agent. These should be cheaper as they don’t have a high street office to maintain.
One is www.Hatched.co.uk which has been running for 18 months and another is www.halfapercent.com which covers the London area only.
One of the big concerns about online letting agents is how to judge their reliability and financial stability.
After all they will not have a big office in a high street location.
To make sure they are secure, landlords should check that they are members of one of the main trade bodies such as the UK Association of Letting Agents (UKALA) or ARLA.
To find out more about how to let property and tenant finding ask me. I’m David Lawrenson from property investment expert consultancy Letting Focus. I’m the author of “Successful Property Letting – How to Make Money in Buy to Let” the UK’s top selling buy to let book.
I’m a property investment speaker , I contribute to newspapers and a host of property websites, write a property investment blog and run property investment seminars
You can read more of my property expert insights and details of my networking, advice, buy to let mentoring programme and property consulting at my website www.lettingfocus.com.
My next London property seminar is on 10th September. Click here for details: Property Seminar Event and I am also speaking at the property investors show in London on 22nd September. I will also be a panellist at a debate in the afternoon at the show. Details here: http://www.propertyinvestor.co.uk/london/seminar.asp
What’s unique about lettingfocus.com is that we are unbiased and independent, because unlike most people in the buy to let and property “advice” business we are not linked to a property company, developer, agent or bridging loan financier and do not receive commissions from any of these sources.
If a property investment is lousy – We’ll tell you straight and we will tell you all about buy to let and property investment - the good and the bad.
Copyright: David Lawrenson 2007. This blog is updated at least twice a week
To read archived blogs select a date from the list at the right. To read recent ones, just page down.

A House Prices Crash in the UK is Unlikely But Some Areas Will See a Correction

I’m just back from a short holiday to see there is more gloom in financial markets. I also see that the news today is that the S&P/Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index fell 3.2 per cent last quarter from the same period in 2006, its sharpest decline since the index was created in 1987. This was an acceleration from the 1.6 per cent in the first quarter. As this data was collected before the end of July - before the sub-prime lending crisis really hit in August – the falls can only be expected to become more rapid over the near term.
Of course the key to property investment is to buy well and pick locations with care.
I don’t think that house prices will collapse in the UK, though some areas, notably parts of Ulster where I spent the weekend, are in my opinion already too high and due a correction.
In north Antrim I saw two bed terraces on at over £200K. With rental yields already very low according to my friends over there, I can only see house prices falling back a bit in Ulster. There has been some regeneration it’s true in Ulster, but I think the leap of 50 per cent in house prices in Ulster over the last 18 months or so, is more than enough.
To find out more about buy to let mortgages and property investment ask me. I’m David Lawrenson from property investment consultancy Letting Focus. I’m the author of “Successful Property Letting – How to Make Money in Buy to Let” the UK’s top selling buy to let book.
I’m a speaker, I contribute to newspapers and a host of property websites, write a property investment blog and property investment
You can read more of my property expert insights and details of my networking, advice, property and buy to let seminar programme and property consulting at my website http://www.lettingfocus.com/
My next London seminar is on 10th September and I am also speaking at the property investors show in London on 22nd September. I will also be a panellist at a debate in the afternoon at the show. Details here: http://www.propertyinvestor.co.uk/london/seminar.asp
What’s unique about lettingfocus.com is that we are unbiased and independent, because unlike most people in the buy to let and property “advice” business we are not linked to a property company, developer, agent or bridging loan financier and do not receive commissions from any of these sources.
If a property investment is lousy – We’ll tell you straight and we will tell you all about buy to let and property investment - the good and the bad.
Copyright: David Lawrenson 2007. This blog is updated at least twice a week
To read archived blogs select a date from the list at the right. To read recent ones, just page down.