House for sale

Posted August 22, 2007 at 7:21 pm by Quintijn Knepper in General.

Selling your house? Buying a new house? Hard to imagine without the internet. As it happens, I am in the process of selling my house in the city of Utrecht and have started searching for a bigger house near Utrecht. So now I comb all house selling websites on the internet, even the ones selling just a few houses. It’s funny really how I can’t imagine visiting all local estate agents to find out what is for sale. Is this really how people used to do it?

In any case, what role do estate agents play nowadays? Almost everything seems to be happening on the internet. Searching for a property has become an internet activity, and both private and professional sellers can offer their house for sale on the internet.

After the rise of sites as Funda.nl, in recent years Dutch house selling sites shoot up like mushrooms. Jaap.nl, Huistekoop.nl, Dimo.nl, Zoekallehuizen.nl, to name but a few. Following the success of Funda, there are now so many sites it’s getting hard to decide on which site to put your house for sale. Jaap.nl claims to have the most houses for sale on offer, but everybody I know still mainly uses Funda.nl

A make or break for house selling sites is surveyability, speed, specific search options (search for a certain type of house, region, distance, square feet, etc.), and the number of postable photos.

It astonishes me how badly some estate agents present houses on the internet, using shitty, little or even no photographs. Truly a missed opportunity. This could never involve an estate agent still happy with his job. Then you don’t know your trade or no longer care, is my opinion.

These days you can also offer your property for sale on the internet yourself, through Makelaarsland.nl. Sounds better than it is, because reality is slightly different. It requires paying your brokerage upfront, irrespective of selling or not selling your house through them, so you always lose your brokerage. Not exactly decent. And you still show people around yourself, do the sales pitch, and deliver the photographs for the site, only negotiations are done through the estate agent. Then again, payable brokerage is considerably lower than with regular estate agents. And yet, these are the main reasons for me not to choose this way of selling.

I have years of experience with internet property matters. For some time I rented out a room in my house. Tenants and landlords are easily matched through the internet. I mainly used kamernet.nl, but Marktplaats and Speurders also work well. But those days are gone. From now on all rooms in my house are for my own use.

So, personally I choose an ‘old-fashioned’ estate agent, and make sure my requirements regarding internet publication are met. I want to be represented on Funda, have a minimum of 14 photographs of my house on the internet and these photographs need to be taken on a sunny Saturday to ensure best quality. Doesn’t seem like strange or extortionate requirements to me, but after internet searching for a house for some months now, they seem pretty unique.