FSB0%

0% commission. It's a tried and tested tactic that has been used to establish a presence in new markets. Many reassuringly expensive agents saw their market share severely dented when an audacious out of towner started doing the job for free in recent years.

Now a fresh assault on the reassuringly expensive agent seems to be afoot as Channel 4 Presenter, Sarah Beeny has launched a new self sale portal called Tepilo.com. She hasn't laid out on branded Mini's or cappucino machines, but Tepilo has adopted the 0% model in an attempt to tempt sellers away from the services of Estate Agents. It is completely free to list a property on Tepilo.com and the site offers the facilities to pretty much handle the whole selling process. Presumably, Tepilo's business plan is to earn commissions on all the services that you would expect an agent to refer usually. For example, the site will, very diligently, not allow you to list a property without a HIP and if you don't have one already they direct you to myhiphome.co.uk; a site which bears a striking resemblance (bar a few quid) to hipilo.co.uk.

This is by no means the first FSBO (For Sale By Owner) service to launch in the UK, (remember Tescopropertymarket.com?) but is there any reason why this one should succeed where others have failed? To succeed, they need traffic, but portal traffic is built on one singularly important factor; choice. Forget presentation, forget features or technologies, the buyer wants choice and for that reason you have to have everything that's on the market. Tepilo may attract a lot of listings, but a lot just doesn't cut it. Tescopropertymarket understood this and tried to cheat it's way to glory. They failed. Although Tepilo's property price info is supplied by Zoopla, I can't imagine any of the portals would dare bite the hand that feeds them by listing properties from Tepilo or vice versa.

Even in a recession though, fortune favours the brave and somebody even bigger than Tesco could upset the applecart and give Tepilo a big helping hand. If Google rock up with their real estate search in the UK in the next few months, Tepilo will have it's chance to shine. Google won't make it's property listings as fully featured as Rightmove's or Primelocation's, it doesn't need to. Globrix and Nestoria have laid the foundations for property to be found through a search engine and then presented through an agents own website already. Tepilo can feed a search engine in the same way an agent's website would. This interdependency is critical; If you want to see the 10 or 15% of the market which is FSBO properties, you have to go to Tepilo, if you want to see the other 85 or 90% of the market, you go to Rightmove et al. But if you want to see everything, you go to Google. Not instead of, but beforehand.

It is an interesting irony that someone who has built a career on chronicling the misadventures of the 'average' homeseller, should now decide to facilitate what will no doubt be a comedy of errors for some. A few of the sellers that have already listed on the site have made a real hash of presenting their properties (here's my favourite thus far). Perhaps Tepilo will provide Channel 4 with an almost limitless supply of property selling horror stories, perhaps it will be another short-lived FSBO folly or perhaps (only with help from the aforementioned) it will finally provide the UK with a viable self sale solution. Interesting times...