Press Dispensary - June 29, 2006 - The all-female company Homesweethome.co.uk (http://www.homesweethome.co.uk) is bringing a woman's touch to buying and selling property online. Its service cuts out the mercenary middleman and appeals to bargain hungry, multitasking women who have more sense than to waste time and money on estate agents.
Increasingly, the savviest players in the booming British property market are women. The 'SASSY' (Smart Ambitious Self-Sufficient and Young) woman – a term coined by mortgage lender One Account - is readily shopping around for mortgages and realising that it's possible to sell property independently on the internet without incurring estate agents' fees – or VAT.
It's no longer necessary to hand over thousands of pounds to an estate agent in order to gain high exposure and bag a buyer – or to waste time on office hours appointments. An estimated one in ten people selling property in the UK now do so without an estate agent, and as the average house price in Britain stands at £200,000, home owners can save around £4,700 by joining forces with the private property sales website, Homesweethome.co.uk.
A 2003 Halifax survey showed the proportion of mortgages being taken out by single women had more than doubled on the previous 20 years. Three years later, Homesweethome.co.uk is now revealing its own survey results. In its 2006 poll, 28% of participating females* had purchased a property as a single woman, and even women buying property with a partner claimed their opinion was 18 times more likely than the man’s to influence property purchase decisions.
Director of Homesweethome.co.uk, Natalie Gilbert, says: "Selling property privately is a satisfying experience because you're taking a dynamic personal decision about the biggest transaction you’ll ever make. Women enjoy being self-reliant - including a middleman can be frustrating as well as expensive! Dealing directly with the buyer is a pleasure and very empowering."
She adds: "We’ve done our homework and understand that women enjoy a more personal touch; it’s also encouraging to discover from our survey that women actually feel more confident and comfortable dealing with a female-owned business like Homesweethome.co.uk."
Homesweethome.co.uk’s survey shows that 85% of women would consider selling their home privately if the process was straightforward. In line with this, the company gives private sellers plenty of help to create an attractive, professional web advert containing up to seven colour images of the property for sale, and written in the client's own words rather than generic estate agent language. The advert is immediately active and can be modified or updated at any time.
Properties advertised on Homesweethome.co.uk can also been viewed by users of Fish4, Propertyfinder, Channel4Homes, Sky, MSN, Times online, Yahoo, Wanadoo, Telegraph.co.uk and more. Today’s savvy women want to kick off their shoes and soak up the pleasures of browsing online for that perfect home.
As well as providing helpful advice on creating a successful advert, Homesweethome.co.uk contains practical and legal advice on buying and selling property privately, including guidance from the Office of Fair Trading.
"After adding up the cost of estate agents' fees over the years", says Natalie, "we began selling privately and wondered why more people didn’t do it! Following our own successes, Homesweethome.co.uk was born."
* Survey of over 100 women, May 2006
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Notes for editors
For further information please contact:
Helen Martin, Managing director
Tel: 0870 62 62 533
Email: helen@homesweethome.co.uk
Site: www.homesweethome.co.uk
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