The BBC looks at the future of the property market now that it finally looks like things are starting to pick up.
As you can imagine, the internet looks set to dominate, with more traditional means of buying and selling houses, such as newspaper advertising, likely to take a back seat in the future, if not disappearing completely.
As well as estate agency websites, the property portals such as Rightmove and FindAProperty are likely to receive most of the web traffic, and there is of course, Â the constant threat of Google entering the market, as they have done already, although with limited success, in Australia.
Another potential big player is Tesco, which recently came back into the property market with iSold.com – currently only available in the Bristol area – a site for selling your home at reasonably low cost. They made an unsuccessful entry into the market a couple of years ago but ended falling foul of estate agency rules and had to back out.
photo credit: R i c h a r d
Let’s hope that hand in hand with new methods of selling we get a refreshed mortgage market with innovative deals and plenty of competition.