Mortgage broker launches home buying and selling service

Thursday 26th July 2012

A mortgage adviser is to launch an online house sales service designed to challenge estate agents with financial services.  

Currently, Sussex-based Property Financial Management is making its new For Sale Online service available to its own clients, but the platform will be available to mortgage brokers nationwide.

The new sales service has been launched to try and counter the number of estate agents who try to ‘pick’ clients off by getting them to use their own mortgage services.

Registered with the Property Ombudsman and planning to advertise properties widely on portals such as Zoopla, the service will cost £276 as a fixed fee upfront, with a 0.19% fee on completion.

The £276 fee includes an EPC, floor plan, professional pictures, written details, and supply and erection of a For Sale Online sign, as well as online marketing.

Chris Dixon, Property Financial Management managing director, said: “I am almost invariably the first person to hear when one of my clients is thinking of moving house, but when someone goes into an estate agent, they are told about the agent’s own in-house mortgage broking service.

“Yet I have clients who have had good houses, the type that are relatively easy to sell, who are charged an enormous amount of money by agents in relation to the amount of work done. I have absolutely nothing against estate agents, but this is a competitive market for all of us, and we all have to go after whatever business we can.

“My view is that this new service will not be for everyone, and if we feel that someone would do better to use a traditional agent, we will tell them.

“However, estate agents generally operate by swallowing the upfront costs and then charging a hefty ‘success fee’. By getting the client to shoulder the upfront costs, we can reduce overall charges to them considerably.

“Brokers are concerned that their clients are being picked off by estate agents, and I just feel that other brokers may want to use the platform. Our final success fee of 0.19% is roughly 20% of what an estate agent is charging.”

Dixon said that the new For Sale Online sales service offered to clients will not initially use Rightmove, purely for cost reasons. “It is extremely expensive, but we will keep that under review and it may change,” he said.