An online estate agent, Be Street Smart, is looking to raise £75,000 via crowdfunding in exchange for a 16% stake in its business.
Its model looks very different from most other online agents, as it works on a ‘no sale, no fee’ basis.
Listing costs nothing, but vendors can buy optional items such as an installed sales board and a sales pack which consists of EPC, floorplan and professional photographs.
The fee payable on a successful sale is £950.
A similar pricing system operates for rental properties, with landlords being charged nothing to list, but they also seem to pay nothing for a successfully agreed let. They can pay for optional items such as EPCs and gas safety certificates.
Be Street Smart says in its pitch on Seedrs: “The estate agency model is at a tipping point. We believe sellers and landlords are no longer willing to pay extortionate fees to high street agents when all property searches are now done online.
“We aim to build the UK’s most compelling online estate agent service, stripping out the costs of high street offices, branded cars and staff viewings and develop a world-class mobile technology.
“We offer low flat-rate fees, a nationwide reach and all of the services of a traditional agent, plus useful new features via our proprietary technology.
“We have an on-boarding strategy to acquire critical mass of properties in key London boroughs, before scaling out nationwide. We offer low flat-rate listing fees whilst offering a suite of optional services to upgrade to.”
The team are former estate agents Adrian Sutherland and Alex Sullivan, and Alex Griffin.
On the site, it claims that sellers save £10,680 in fees and landlords save £1,778 when compared to the average cost of selling or letting in London.
The site also refers to accuracy according to the Property Misdescriptions Act, which is no longer in force.
Comments (12)
The fox on the homepage looks very trustworthy don’t you think?
Should have mentioned I expect the ‘floor’ to drop to sub £500 inc vat for the top three volume OL’s.
Can’t believe I am in total agreement with Jonnie. There will indeed be a ‘race to the floor’ on price with online agents – they have no other reason for sellers to use them. The only survivable OL’s will be those listing 250+ a day who manage to combine expensive national TV marketing (only way to generate big volume) with a hugely effective, and very cost effective, online instruction sign up and online viewer booking, feedback and sales progression system. It is not possible to service an inventory of 1000s of clients – and potential buyers – over the phone at less than £1000 gross a sale. Staffing costs would be astronomical. My view is that two, at the most three, big players will evolve (with at least one backed by an EA corporate) and possibly take 5%-10% max of the market between them. The rest of the OL’s will disappear or be miniscule businesses at best.
They DONT advertise their fees inclusive of vat……..small print at the bottom of the page!!!!!!!!!!! Just opening my twitter account to tell the relevant authorities.
Really…….these companies can’t even comply with the CAP code on their homepage yet they’re looking for investors…….sums it up really!!!!!
This just gets better…
…have a proper laugh and calculate your “savings”. The example given is defaulted at £600000. Press “calculate” and it states “You would save £12240 On average the estate agency fee is 1.7% + vat”
So… their “Successful Sales Fee” of £950 PLUS VAT (£1140 total) magically disappears into thin air, then… otherwise the potential “saving” would actually only amount to £11,100 – wouldn’t it?
This farcical offering really is the gift that keeps on giving, innit!
Hang on a cotton pickin’ minute!
Just float your cursor over the tab on your explorer and it states “We’re a property market place matching buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants without the use of agents.
Never mind Powys – what the chuff are RM, Z etc doing letting these chancers list properties?
Remove their feeds – shut them down. End of.
“The fee payable on a successful sale is £950.”
AHEM!! Website says: “Please note all prices are subject to VAT.”
ANOTHER one for Henry to rat on to his mates in Powys… ;o)
Gumtree/Ebay…………..?
Genius
“stripping out the costs of high street offices, branded cars and staff viewings”
“We offer low flat-rate fees, a nationwide reach and all of the services of a traditional agent”
Surely the first claim disallows the second? Who proof reads for these?
We will ignore the fact they have an impressive register of 2 properties and as expected it looks like it’s a back bedroom jobbie, and of course they will have probably vanished before my holiday tan has later in the year, instead is this the start of the race to the floor for the budget lot, I think we can be sure this lot won’t be the ones but charging what appears to be not a lot up front hasn’t worked so doing the same fee illusion on completion looks like the next step?
Jonnie
What a load of bo**ocks. They will never charge their fee because they will sell NOTHING.
They say.
Be Street Smart says in its pitch on Seedrs: “The estate agency model is at a tipping point. We believe sellers and landlords are no longer willing to pay extortionate fees to high street agents when all property searches are now done online.
it is true that many people do search on line. But that is but the start of the journey. Buyers and sellers will simply not cope with the myriad things to be sorted along the way. The “digital soothsayers” are “willing” traditional agency to fall apart. But mark my words (you heard it first here folks!) it will not be too long before the first of the failed digital estate agents puts up the shutters. Then we will see a land slide. Moving home is complex whatever they (the digital soothsayers) say and it cannot be done cheaply with the best interest of buyers and sellers at heart. Its seen as an easy way to make money and their (the diggies) consciences should be prickling at taking money from sad, unsuspecting investors who have been conned into believing it’s an investment for the future.
What utter tosh. What is unique about “no sale, no fee” isn’t that how estate agents operate?
We already operate primarily in a 1% margin marketplace with the cost of doing business increasing against a depleting stockpile.
Why anyone would want to launch a business for sub 1% margins is beyond me, must be mad or rich or deluded.
The corporates will continue to buy up good independents and the ones they don’t will be robust in sales, lettings, mortgage and conveyancing.
If “online” agents are what consumers want then why do they hold only a microscopic part of the available inventory?