The supermarket giant has teamed up with estate agent Spicer Haart to launch iSold.com, potentially saving customers thousands of fees.
Tesco's move back into the property market follows its original venture Tesco Property Market, which offered people the chance to sell their own home for £199.
But this had to be pulled after opposition from estate agents and existing property listing websites, which pointed out it was breaching rules on home sales, which meant it was responsible for details.
The Office of Fair Trading wants to change this, but for the time being iSold.com checks will be carried out by Spicerhaart agents.
The new Tesco move swiftly follows the OFT's announcement that it wanted to shake up the home selling market and make it easier for rivals to traditional estate agents and people to sell their own homes.
Typically agents charge between 1% and 2% of a property's selling price as commission - so iSold.com's flat fee could save thousands for those with larger and more expensive homes.
The service is due to start a trial in the Bristol area and could then be rolled out nationwide.
The Tesco site requires sellers to carry out all the work normally performed by an estate agent, such as measuring the rooms, writing particulars and even valuing the property.
Sellers are given a Tesco-branded 'for sale' sign, but must arrange and conduct viewings themselves. Buyers have to deal entirely through the website, negotiating with the seller through emails as 'negotiation face to face can be quite awkward'. The site providesguides to carrying out the negotiation, handling the conveyancing and tips and safeguards for organising viewings.
The site was launched this week with 300,000 properties for sale in England and Wales, taken from the website of its ' partners', online estate agencies fish4homes.co.uk and Smart-NewHomes.co.uk.
However, other websites, including market-leader Rightmove.co.uk, refused to work with Tesco. An industry source said: 'Tesco approached all the website operators about two months ago and tried to persuade them to join. Almost all of them said no.'
Ed Williams, managing director of Rightmove, said: 'Our solicitors are looking at the remarkable similarities to our site.' Andy Etches, managing director of online agency Brightsale, added: 'The pure 'sell it yourself ' online model is fatally flawed. Selling a home is a very big deal, and the feedback we have had is that people do not feel confident in going it completely alone.'
From: Thisismoney.co.uk
