Sold.co.uk - What would you do?

Ok my fellow ADSLguiders I'm the owner of the domain name sold.co.uk
I have plans for the domain... plans which are already in basic motion but can be changed.

The domain name is obviously very commercial and has a lot of potential.

What I'd like to know from you guys... if it was your domain... thinking business minded what would you do with it?

Could I realistically have a good name (with correct financial backing and long term marketing) to become a rival for ebay? Or perhaps another area?
I currently have a property related website in motion but I want to make sure I'm not missing an avenue where I could capitalise with a domain name like this.

I'd be grateful for your input good people.

thing is, you only own the .co.uk right? bit of a bother if a number of other people own the .com, .net etc.

that's what i think anyway.

I know mate.
Thing is you have to run with what you got don't ya.

I only own mobileunlocked.co.uk and make a nice sum from it while someone else owns the .com version.

It's not impossible.

I would stick with the property market, especially since property is hot at the moment.

If it were me, I'd do it as an independent website for people to sell their houses. Sell it to the home owners and give them really good exposure on the site. Lots of photos whcih the owner could take and upload themselves.
Basically why pay an estate agent when you can do it yourself. Still have the signs with SOLD.CO.UK on them outside and get as much online ads as you can.

I like bigtart's idea. Basically use the same principal as Autotrader but for houses. I'm not aware of any similar scheme in the UK so you'd have the benefit of being the only company doing this.

Think about how much an estate agent makes per house sold (something like 2.5% of the price isn't it?), so you could easily undercut that whilst still making several hundreds of pounds per advert. The only thing holding this back would be getting enough exposure to make people use the service - who wants to advertise somewhere that no one looks? Could start with some advertising, and maybe give the first 1000 customers free adverts?

As bigtart says, you could provide printable banners for "Sold.co.uk" that people could optionally put up outside their house to advertise it (as most estate agents do).

I've always wondered what estate agents actually do, besides advertising your property - most people I know absolutely hate estate agencies, claiming that they're useless and expensive. Time to cut out the middle man?

Interesting concept anyway.

/me goes to register buymyhouse.com or something similar lol

Be very careful on the potential legal implications of becoming an Estate Agent... not so much now but if new regulations come in etc.

The idea is good.

seb

damn you

I thought about the online estate agent thing a few years back. Even have interactive movies of a walkthrough of each house. Just pop it on your site so people could view the house online and then go and look if they wanted to.

I think sold.co.uk is an excellent domain name and you could potentially make some money. But it all depends on how you advertise. One of the things I have looked into is motorway advertising. Millions of people each day drive up and down motorways and they will see the advert. The problem is with all advertising is cost. To truly market your web domain would cost a fortune.

Do you want to sell it?

There are a few online estate agencies. The big problem is one of security. Agents usually accompany prospective purchasers and vet them to some degree before letting them see a house. If you were to make an online equivalent then you'd need some sort of sensible and reliable vetting procedure. Another fly in that ointment is the HIP idea that will involve substantial amounts of information being needed before each house can be put on the market. Traditional estate agents will offer this service within their fees and therefore online estate agents will start to struggle as they won't have the manpower or the contacts to do the same. You could gamble that HIPs won't be introduced (there is a lot of opposition).

A secure version of ebay which insists on proper id and ethical selling and bidding policies might be more of a goer. An auction site with shill bidding detection and a way of verifying all sellers first would be excellent. The over heads in running it would be quite high as you'd need to credit check and address check each person that signed up. You'd need to do the same with buyers. PS I want 5% of profits for consultancy