Island Life Magazine Ltd January/February 2006 | Page 52

PROPERTY FEATURE

Blind Buying!
Shopping for houses online
sees thousands – even millions
– spent at the click of a mouse.
Buying a pair of shoes or
groceries online requires a leap
of faith, with many consumers
only just getting used to the
internet as a shopping portal.
In fact, the large majority of
internet purchases consist of
less personable items such as
travel, tickets, music and
DVDs.
Yet now Brits are buying
houses online, without having
even seen them first.
While traditionally a gut feel
goes a long way to influencing
a house purchase, a new wave
of investors are buying homes
using no more than a
photograph and vital statistics
to steer their decision.
Coined ‘blind buying’ by
founders of property website
landlordtrader.co.uk, this new
trend has proven that people
across the UK are willing to put
their faith in the web and each
other.
Research shows that around 60
per cent of online shoppers
spend around £33 or less per
month on goods, yet when it
comes to buying property,
investors are beginning to use
the web as an investment
portal investing far larger sums
of money.
On landlordtrader.co.uk
investors are prepared to sign
away an average spend of
around £135,000 at the click of
a mouse. It claims 93 per cent
of its buyers have agreed an
offer to purchase properties
without conducting a single
viewing over the past six
months.
Landlordtrader co-founder
William Foot says, “Friends of
mine worry about spending as
little as £20 on the web, so
when we launched Landlord
Trader, we knew we would be
asking a lot of our users.
“Yet provided the price is right,
buy-to-let investors are willing
to bid for houses with little
more to go on than a

52

APPEARANCES CAN
BE DECEPTIVE ON
THE ISLE OF WIGHT
Britain’s premier house builder has just released one of its more
unusual yet very popular homes at its new development on the Isle
of Wight.

photograph and a few key
figures.”
He believes that the si H\˜