Online Communities: The Future of Private Property Sales?

Out of property portals emerged FSBO property; the business of selling your own house, selling property privately as it is also known.

Property has become harder to sell as the credit crunch has worsened, at least without dropping prices a great deal. Reluctant to do this, some people have taken to some extraordinary lengths to offload their properties while avoiding such losses.

New and wonderful methods have included swapping houses through specialist home-swapping websites, advertising for sale on the top of cakes, running raffles and competitions, and more conventional methods such as advertising through online private sales portals.

This search for new ways to sell property and/or move house, has coincided with the massive growth in the use of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. This has led to the creation of a new growing phenomenon, online property communities.

One such community that springs to mind is Zungalow.com. The new portal has three options for advertising property, with one starting from £25, which the site owners say makes it ideal for people who simply wants to showcase their property to the community, whether they have any intention to sell or not.

If social property sites like this take off as their parents in both social media and private sales portals have, it could revolutionise the way we buy and sell houses in the UK.