I suspect in fact that the 'statistics' quoted were from the journalist's imagination, rather than from the services themselves - journalists are rarely known for in-depth well-informed research - why bother when it's easier to make it up or exaggerate.
Propertybroker claiming 20% of all sales in SE London is clearly utter bunkum when they only have around 500 properties on their books, total. Eureka are less than 3 weeks old and managed to get a somewhat embellished PR piece into several tabloids in their first week, claiming (or was that the 'journo' exaggerating again) that they were the *first* internet site to sell a property on the same day as the ad was posted - perhaps Eureka were entirely unaware of the several much larger established sites that have been around for the last 5-10 years which have been there done that before....
This however resulted in quite a lot of traffic to their website on the ONE day they got press publicity and doubtless on that ONE day their webstats might have hit 2000 at one time. Would they be prepared to say what their stats fell back to now that they no longer have any form of marketing for their service out there.
One editorial a decent property site doth not make.
Selling privately using a decent professional website that has experience and knows what it's doing certainly does work - the trick is to find the gems (not too difficult with 5 minutes research on Google) amongst the also-ran wannabee pretenders that think running a successful business is simply about setting up a property site, offering the moon and stealing other people's ideas.
As the OFT said in their guidance issued last Christmas, choose your online property service carefully and remember you get what you pay for. If you pay nothing, you can hardly complain when it doesn't work.
The Guardian in fact badly misquoted the OFT when it warned about choosing the wrong property site to use alongside an agent as there could be a conflict with Sole Agency agreements, even if the property site claimed not to be 'an estate agent', because of agency type services offered behind the scenes.
They went on to claim that the 'best websites' are those that have a ready-made list of buyers registered and waiting to be matched to sellers - Oh dear!? - were the Guardian unaware that the OFT regard this as an 'agency service'. Are these the same websites that the Guardian warns against using in their next sentence....???
The numbers quoted by the journo were also severely suspect - Houseweb don't have 4000 properties on their books, at least not in the UK. They might have had 4000 properties pass through their books over the years, but that's a rather different matter. A figure around 800 is probably more like their current stock, which certainly doesn't make them the biggest. It's not suprising that Propertybroker had more properties in E17 (the area conveniently chosen by the journo to run his /her test - presumably that's where he /she lives) than the other sites as they are a 'local' London specialist, whereas the other services are national. Try the exercise in other parts of the UK and you will see a significantly different picture emerge - was this article actually written for the journo by the nice people at Propertybroker I wonder?
Although the advice about choosing a site with plenty of property in your own area was off the mark anyway, it doesn't really matter whether a service has other property on their books in the chosen area or not, what matters is whether the service has the capability to market any particular property effectively in all locations - this is not dependent on the volume of property held in the same area, much as the public like to see other homes to cosy theirs up to when selling. The key is whether the site can bring in enquiries for buyers looking for *that* property - which is more dependent on experience and the overall online profile of the business. A well-ranked service of long-standing with no property in a particular area will still attract far more interest and enquiries for a new listing in that area, than a poorly developed website with 50 properties all located together.
However, that doesn't make good copy because the concepts are not easy to put across to the public, so journo's tend to pander only to what they think their readers like to read, basically the usual anecdotes then.
I could go on, but probably have done already.
