An introduction to Tepilo by Sarah Beeny

The number of property related queries on Google is believed to have grown by 35 per cent in the last year and more people are using the internet to search for properties to rent or buy than ever before. Marketing your own property is now rapidly growing in popularity – which is one of the reasons I set up Tepilo.com – a site which enables you to do just that. The internet is making it much easier to deal with your own property marketing and can really help sell, let or gage interest in your property.

With Tepilo this is also a completely free option – so there are no charges to pay for experimenting, and no commission to pay should you find several buyers or tenants interested in your property and decide to accept an offer.

There’s also some great advice online about getting your property ready to sell or let– how to conduct viewings, how to add value to your property – and there are countless services to help you along the way with each step.

Properties from Tepilo are also fed into a number of other sites, completely free of charge as well, meaning you get some great exposure for your property – at no cost to yourself. This makes it a great way to save money and get your property in order.

There are some implications and some benefits of selling privately which I will try and run through here:

Some of the Benefits:

Quick to get going – all you need is some photos, a description and preferably a floorplan
Low or no cost – you’re not risking anything financially by selling or letting yourself
Save money – no commission to pay saving you thousands of pounds in commission
Keep control – You can add the information you want – and we’ve found that personal descriptions work best. You have the opportunity to describe your property how you want to – bringing out the things that you really make your property a winner.
Direct communication – You stay in control of the process and deal with everything first hand, so you always know where you stand. It’s you driving the process on, so you can communicate freely as required – no waiting for the middleman to come back, or to pass on a message. You can also get a real idea of how likely a buyer or tenant is to make an offer and how things are going.
Online negotiation – some sites, including Tepilo, offer online negotiation, meaning you don’t have to be afraid of making an offer, or accepting one. You are completely in control of how much you want to offer or accept on a property, but by negotiating online, this gives you more opportunity to get a good deal or hold out for the price you want.
Lack of pressure – many of us have often found ourselves under pressure to accept an offer or make an offer by an agent – selling or letting without the agent means things usually progress far more naturally – meaning less chance of last minute failures.  An agent generally wants to get another sale on the books, you want to get the best price for your property.
Explore the market – you are completely free to change the asking price of your property, up or down from day to day – it’s a good way to work out how much interest you get at different levels.

Some of the implications:

Viewings – You will need to conduct your own viewings, but this need not take as much time as you think. Try to collect interested parties and organise viewings on a set day each week – not always possible – but it saves you time. A viewing need not take that long, and when you think you’re selling or letting one of your most valuable assets– wouldn’t you like to be the one to show it off? I’ve often found myself doing viewings in the past, even with an agent trying to sell my property.

Time – you will need to find some time to answer enquiries,  but again, this need not take that long – a few minutes a day at most – and you would need to answer enquiries from an agent anyway.

Valuation – There is no science to a valuation and once you understand how an estate agent or professional values your home you will be able to see how straightforward it is to value it yourself.

The two ways to value are to find out how much a home like yours recently sold for and/or look at what you can buy at the level you think you should be selling for – ie if you think your 2 bedroom flat should be worth £130,000 but there are lots of 3 bedroom houses at a similar level – you are unlikely to achieve your price. Not much science to it really. Nothing that keeping a close eye on the local market and seeing how much other properties are selling for won’t tell you.

There are an increasing number of online valuation services too, Propertypriceadvice, Zoopla and Nethouseprices are among these, most of which use data on latest sale prices from the Land Registry or sophisticated algorithms to give predicted valuations based on your answers to sets of logical questions.

Best of luck, give it a try and let me know how you get on.

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