We're looking for the edge, to enable us to offer a better service, than that currently provided by estate agents.  That is why we have developed this web site for you.

Our new stance is to embrace 'valuation techniques' to a greater extent than estate agents tend to do and thus help people to price houses more accurately in the marketplace.

The purpose of using valuations and the main purpose of anyone doing them, should be to act between parties (i.e. the vendors and purchasers), in determining the right price for any particular house to be sold for.  With that, the whole market will be able to flow, once again.

In comparison, the mandate for estate agents (as is generally stated by them) is to try and get the 'best' price that they can for their client (a single vendor) in the current market conditions (but usually without settling upon a specific time by which this needs to be achieved).  The difficulty is, this does not involve the need to do a proper valuation of the house to be sold at all!  That’s the first deceit.

Instead it actually works by the agent simply gauging the level of vendor desperation and than fixing the asking price as high as possible, whilst loosely taking into account both the market conditions and the extent to which the client might be persuaded to later take a lower offer, in order to get the house sold!

If estate agents always put asking prices at the very top of the range of values within which a house should sell, they will always be out of range!  Doing this will always mean they are quoting prices in excess of the current true value and this is naturally misleading to buyers.

The second difficulty is that those clients who have no wish to accept true market offers at all, are still taken on by the agent anyway, at whatever price that owner thinks they ought to get - irrespective of true current value.  This is because under the present arrangements, agents don’t actually do proper valuations to determine what that is!  The result is that large numbers of houses on estate agents' books are generally over priced.  The effect of this, is to cause damaging confusion in the marketplace about what market values are actually currently running at.

Unfortunately this tends to drive buyers away, which in turn is the primary cause of the next price slump, or to be more precise the next correction in prices (because the prices being asked were never actually achievable in the first place). This way of marketing houses ought to be outlawed by our Government, but it’s not!  Why not?

Instead, IF everyone placing houses up for sale in the market used proper valuations to determine asking prices, e.g. by using www.landregistryservice.co.uk, the market would flow, continually, in all economic conditions.  This achievement would be of immense benefit to the wider economy as well as to individuals wishing to move house at any particular time.

One of the main benefits of being a house owner in the first place is to be able to be mobile enough to sell and buy elsewhere simultaneously.  If that opportunity should no longer be available as a result of a de-stabilised private housing market, in exactly the way we are currently seeing, fewer people are likely to be interested in becoming home owners.  This itself could ultimately become a threat to the whole idea of (and indeed the intrinsic value of) home ownership.

WE, at property-match, are aiming to help the private housing market by offering a better way in which to buy and sell houses, by trying to ensure that houses placed online with us have been properly valued beforehand.

We are taking the lead on this because we know that estate agents are failing to carry out proper house valuations, as is clearly shown by the Land Registry statistics on completed house sales and their differentials with average house asking prices.  The whole of the housing market has suffered as a direct result of this failure.

Vendors: - if you would like to join us in improving the way houses are bought and sold here in the UK, we welcome your business on this basis.  We look forward to not only advertising your property online for you, but also to liaising with you in person about anything which you may be unsure about when you are in the process of selling your house.

Obviously we would first encourage you to obtain a valuation of your house, based on Land Registry data.  We can help you to order one of these before you actually start the whole marketing process.  Estate agents generally do not offer their clients this at all and our research indicates that many of them are actually opposed to considering doing so.

Intervention by Government, to decide and implement 'public policy', is always a prerequisite to bringing any necessary improvements to the way in which the housing market (or any other market for that matter) functions; especially when a market is hijacked by the poorly considered actions of its main players and negotiators, the estate agents.

Author: Peter Hendry, Consultant in Housing Valuation

We'd like to recommend the recently broadcast Secret Agent series, in which Phil Spencer sets himself the challenge of shifting difficult to sell houses. It's available on Channel 4 and on catchup too.

The instructions on how to make a house ‘ready to market’ and to check the correctness (or otherwise) of the asking price are both clear and easy to follow, and are aimed both at estate agents and owners.

This series of programs confirms, beyond any shadow of doubt, that there are failures in the way estate agents currently work at present. It’s also perfectly understandable that Phil should want to help the housing market by giving viewers his expertise on the subject.  At the top of his list of suggestions is Presentation, very closely followed by Valuation.

Property Match applauds his exposure of the present shortcomings within the housing market, it is in desperate need of better practices swiftly being introduced. The valuation aspect would however need more legislation if agents are to be expected to improve sales by being more accurate about this.  We feel there is a massive opportunity for the present Government here.

In the meantime, we would like to think that our valuation techniques might be voluntarily adopted by all the estate agents, in order to get the UK housing market moving once again.  Unfortunately none of the those we have approached so far are willing to adopt more stringent or accurate valuation techniques.  That’s why legislation would seem to be the only possible option if the housing market is ever to be improved. Secret Agent is definitely helping, by bringing many people’s attention to the current problem(s).

Our Theory - in a nutshell:

If all houses were each valued using the same standard of expertise, the whole market could continue trading, even if fairly large price fluctuations should occur from time to time.

This isn't happening and market stagnation is the unavoidable consequence - as can now be seen.

The Government needs to intervene.

“Property Match (UK) is a remedy which is an useful, clean and direct improvement upon what estate agents are able to offer.  What we offer may be unwelcome to estate agents in terms of bringing new competition, but this is needed.”

To all clients and customers

All the information you will need to manage, and sell your own property, using the Internet is here, on this site.

It’s been designed for those who would prefer to pay a small amount, in exchange for the necessary ‘expertise’ that we’ll provide to you online. We set ourselves apart from ‘free’ sites, by offering you a true ‘value-for-money service’ instead.

Cash (no chain) house sales and purchases are a speciality with us.

A little about our free-site competitors:

When you think about it, If the best Internet property advertising really was on free sites, Rightmove could never have charged estate agents huge fees, or even become an established concept in the first place. This explains why paid-for services, like ours, have distinct advantages over free-listing sites.

But, we offer still better value for money than services like Rightmove, by offering advertising to vendors direct,  - and we make our service available for use by estate agents themselves, should some of them wish this.

We base our service on the premise that owners do in fact have fundamental integrity, as well as an adequate ability to use their own detailed knowledge, when describing their property, whether it’s property for sale or to let.

House owners can now place their property adverts direct on the Internet with integrity and without using estate agents.

In fact, the true purpose of the internet, when it comes to online house advertising, should be this. We say there is no need to use an agent to do these things anymore, if you don’t want to.

We offer those viewing property on our site genuine sellers, advertising with the sole intention of getting sales.

They are obviously genuine, because they have paid a small sum to advertise their houses direct with us.

The difference between us and so-called free sites is, our viewers aren’t bombarded with emails from prospectors, e.g. estate agents touting for business, plus the myriad of other promotional hopefuls tied in with all free-listing web sites that harvest people’s email addresses.

With our site, people just see house details without having to register first.  This speeds up the search process considerably.

As well as that, those searching on our site can see both the agents’ properties and the free-listing house adverts too!!

Property Match really is a one-stop, online shop.

As explained, the motivation for Property Match (UK) being set up is to address the pressing need to change the way the housing market works.  In the absence of Government intervention, it is likely that the changes will need to be initiated from right within the UK house-moving community itself by people like yourself, and the way to start this happening is in fact to use Property Match (UK) and/or other like-minded house marketing web sites.

Most of us have experienced house-price slumps, in earlier years. Some of us can see these are made worse by estate agents' activities; essentially because they amplify market trends, causing booms - then busts in house prices.

That’ s why people need a completely fresh way to market houses and it’s about time this happened.

The team that developed Property-Match (UK) have a breadth of experience in the housing market stretching over 30 years in duration and unlike most estate agents, this includes having supplied professional mortgage valuations as well as having run estate agent’s offices as well.  We have used these technical skills to create this web site.

As you would expect, Property-Match (UK) is now completely independent, having no ties of any description with estate agents or indeed with finance houses for that matter (we absolutely guarantee this).

We allow people to maximize their house-advertising exposure, by providing all the complex online technology, needed for marketing their houses online.  In addition, we provide the power of exclusive search engine optimization, which works for each individual property advertisement that is posted here.

Try Property-Match (UK) - instead of going down the old estate agency route.

Our systems allow you to stay in full control of your online house advertising, right from day one.

Compare us with appointing an estate agent to see how much more work is involved in appointing one, as well as continually having to monitor their performance!

Property Match (UK) is a genuine business Internet facility, offering a financially viable web site for those who wish to avoid having to use estate agents.

The problem is, estate agents have to exaggerate house prices in order to get instructed!

This site is also in direct competition with free sites and we rely on achieving substantially better results than either can achieve.

Security for those selling or letting, when arranging viewings:

Anyone wishing to view a property must first register to identify themselves, both to us and to you.

This is an important aspect of our online security.  Our security systems are exclusively designed by us.  Our systems help to ID people positively, before they can arrange to view your property.

Our security measures are not for any other purpose and, as required under The Data Protection Act, the information prospective viewers supply is not sold on, or used in any other inappropriate way.

Once registered, those wanting to respond to your advertisement can obtain the phone number you specified when you set up your advert.  They should contact you by telephone to make a convenient appointment for an initial viewing.  We will normally notify you beforehand, exactly who should be calling you.

We have found, from our experience, that our systems are a safe way to handle all initial viewing enquiries.

As you will appreciate, free sites are unable to offer such a level of service.

Data Protection:

We are registered under the Data Protection Act as required by law.

Our Registration Number is: Z131710X

For the purpose of the Act, our data controller is: Peter Hendry.

NB: Should you wish to receive details that we hold about you, please use the 'Contact Us' link on the toolbar.  A small admin charge may be made to cover our admin costs, when providing information to those entitled to apply for it.

Still not sure why you should pay to advertise?

The please see Why Pay for a further explanation.

Note:

By using this web site, any arrangements you may already have with an estate agent would normally remain unaffected. To make certain however, you should check that you have retained your right to sell or let your property yourself.  Read the contract carefully.

Once you are certain, you should use our site for direct marketing, knowing that agent's commission would only become chargeable in the event that they introduced the purchaser (or tenant) first.  For more information, please see our FAQ.

PS: We’re nothing to do with propertymatch.com, They’re just using the same name :-(

Property-Match (UK): the modern way to market houses

Established in 1996 + evolving ever since

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