Mills Advertising

MORE than 50 estate agents have joined a groundbreaking house swap website in just three months - giving the ailing property market a much-needed shot in the arm.

Property-Matchmaker.com - dubbed the “match, trade and swap site for property professionals” - matches houses being sold by estate agents and builders.

In its first three weeks after going live it provided more than 600 two-way matches.

Now it has 54* estate agents, with more than 100 branches between them, as widespread as Teesside, Leeds and Billericay, in Essex, and co-founder Paula Westacott is hoping to reach 100 agents by March.

“It is growing more quickly than anyone anticipated, and largely because estate agents are telling each other about it,” says Paula, who came up with the idea for the website after working for builders and estate agents during a 20-year career.

Property-Matchmaker.com is operated from offices in Stokesley, North Yorkshire.

Unlike many other property swapping schemes in the UK, it is exclusively for use by estate agents and house builders.

Once an estate agent or builder registers and uploads properties for sale, a powerful search engine instantly matches the details of each property with what clients of other agencies are looking for based on price, location and number of bedrooms.

An exact match would meet all the requirements of both sellers - the price would be within the minimum/maximum set by each party, the bedrooms matching the minimum specified and the location within the set radius. Matches are also graded as ‘near’ providing property matches 10% cheaper and 20% more expensive than the client has requested, as well as bringing in matches from a slightly larger location. This gives the estate agent a larger bank of matches to work with, and takes in the possibility of the sellers adjusting their price.

Co-director Miki Rogers, a former teacher and IT professional, says: “The public can use the site to test for potential matches but, unlike other property swapping sites, they can only access details of the matching properties through the estate agent - which eases any concerns the agents might have of customers using their selling power, but then doing their own deal and cutting out the agent.”

John Newhouse, Managing Director of Stokesley and Yarm-based Roseberry Newhouse, was one of several estate agents asked to advise on the development of the website. He says: “Property-Matchmaker provides two parties who are committed to a move and whose basic requirements, to all intents and purposes, are perfectly matched. That is an excellent starting point and it is reached instantly. We are great supporters of the concept.”

As well as estate agents, house builder Bellway features more than 320 plots on the site. Estate agents pay only a registration fee - Property-Matchmaker does not get any commission on sales.

Property-Matchmaker can be found at www.property-matchmaker.com

*Figure as of Friday, January 16

View PDF