TheHouseShop.com Arvostelua 43

Selected a Featured-Advert-1-Month for £34.99 that I instantly decided to cancel as the website looks very dodgy. Communication from TheHouseShop was non-existent. The only thing I received was a query from a scammer who wanted to buy our property for peanuts. A poor result for the money paid for. Avoid.

The site is fine and the functionality ok but I closed my listing due to multiple scam attacks.

Basically people contact you via the site saying they want to buy your property (unseen). They provide a phone number (usually overseas) or email.

One guy wanted me to immediately fly to Amsterdam to get the offer in person from an ‘investor.’ When I asked for a written letter of intent and ID, he disappeared.

Another sent a memorandum to purchase attachment but luckily my anti/virus flagged it as infected before I opened it.

There was another person with a Dutch phone number and a women with an Afghanistan number.

I reported it to TheHouseShop but heard nothing back from them.

I’m not sure what the end game is here. I Googled a bit and the closest I could find is a warning that people make offers but then start saying you have to pay some admin fee to get the money transferred from overseas. Then there is one more fee after another.

It's very hard to find a site that is a dedicated property site to list on as a private seller. I think it has to be the next logical step from online cheap agents, to have forums to list your own property. I've had some pretty terrible experiences with traditional agents recently and so I decided to take matters into my own hands - it's all well and good putting up a board, but where can you list? Nothing wrong with Gumtree or Facebook, but they aren't primarily sales sites. So thehouseshop seems to have hit on something - because you can't get on Zoopla or Rightmove as a privateer. I think they could be creating a new market sector. It's very straightforward to list - took me about 20 minutes. If you are missing anything they'll offer you shortcuts to professional services. For an EPC or Photos for example. So with limited or no experience you can be up and running very easily. It remains to be seen what enquiries I might get - time will tell.