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I was interested to read about a couple using Ebay to sell their home, which seems like a great idea.

With conventional estate agents charging at least one percent plus VAT to sell your home, many people are turning to the Internet in search of an effective, but far less costly way of finding a buyer.

The House Network, for example, only charges £398 + VAT in total for the marketing of your property that leads through to a sale, and they use major property portals such as Right Move to find buyers for you. The advantage of the House Network charges is that they are the same irrespective of the value of your house, so it could only cost £467.65 to sell a £1,000,000 house!

Selling on Ebay is far cheaper, though you don’t get the benefit of marketing on Right move, which is becoming one of the major destinations for buyers looking for property.

Ebay will only charge an insertion fee of £35 plus an additional £2 fee for setting a reserve price. So for a total of £37 you can advertise your property to the millions of Ebay users. By setting a long enough auction, prospective buyers could visit the property and even get it surveyed.

Actually, if you think about it, if the seller had prepared a home information pack too, showing local authority searches and ownership details, this could be a real benefit to bidders who haven’t got time to conduct these searches themselves during the duration of your auction.

What a lot of people don’t realise is that Ebay does not charge property sellers a final value fee, so in fact it can be cheaper to sell your home costing hundreds of thousands of pounds than, say, a car or expensive luxury item.

Don’t make a mistake, though, and place your house advert on Ebay without a reserve price as you would be legally bound to sell your house for £1 if that was the highest bid. Ouch!

Its not just houses that are for sale on Ebay. Other property items such as plans for self build houses and land for sale can also be found.

It is amusing though when you see house sellers struggle with delivery options - “pick up only” seems the favoured description. The mind boggles about that!

So if you are selling a house and the estate agents fees don’t appeal, then you might find that vital buyer on Ebay. You still need to abide by the legal aspects of house sales such as conveyancing and HIPs, but it could save you a fortune.