When buying a house we now take for granted that the search begins online, browsing through houses for sale on a national property website like Rightmove where you can say what sort of house you want in which area at a certain price tag and ‘hey presto’ you have a list of properties roughly matching your wish list.

Then you narrow down your search by looking at photos and floor plans, maps and reading the description to cast away anything you don’t like before calling or emailing the relevant estate agents to arrange viewings for the houses you want to see in person.

In this scenario the role of the estate agent in marketing the property has been confined to taking photos, writing a description, drawing a floor plan, valuing the house and uploading the details to Rightmove.   None of which tasks required him to have an office on the High Street.

So you won’t be surprised to hear that many home sellers are now viewing the internet as the primary means of marketing their house for sale in the same way buyers see the internet as the primary means of finding a house for sale.

By marketing houses almost entirely online and doing away with the high street office (with its expensive rent, rates and electricity bills) a new breed of Online Estate Agent has entered the market and they offer to sell your house for a low fixed fee (around £400 - £1000) as opposed to typical rates of 2% on the High Street.

For an average house (currently £162,000) this means the seller will pay around £750 instead of £3250 – a significant saving.  On a £500,000 house the saving rises to around £9000 – a serious amount of money and enough to motivate sellers to really look at Online Estate Agents as a cash saving alternative to the traditional firms.

So who are these Online Estate Agent s and which is the best?

A recent study by The Big Property List (www.thebigpropertylist.co.uk) comparing online estate agents ranked them according to the quality of their website and compares the price, services offered and the number of clients they have already.

The key advice when selecting an Online Estate Agent to sell your house is to look at what services are provided in the packages they offer.  The lowest cost agencies normally don’t include home visits for valuation purposes (they provide a valuation report by email and allow you to decide the price) and will charge extra for a For Sale board and floorplans; and very few include accompanied home visits.

So you need to decide how involved you are willing to be in the sale of your house and what your time and capabilities allow.  If you are happy showing people around your house and negotiating a price you could go for a very low cost service – however if you want to market your house online but with an Estate Agent doing the viewings and negotiation expect to pay a little more.  However you will still make a significant saving compared with using a High Street Estate Agent.

This content was provided by one of our users, jamesgcole