Tesco home selling venture suffers set back

YesterdayFish4homes.co.uk said it was ending its agreement with Tesco Property Market after receiving feedback from estate agent clients indicating it was "not in their best interest".

The Tesco site, which was launched on Saturday, offers a do-it-yourself home selling service enabling people to advertise and manage their own home sale for a fee of £199. This essentially eliminates the need for estate agents, who typically charge up to 3 per cent of the value of any property they sell.

The termination of the Fish4homes contract will mean that Tesco will lose out on tens of thousands of referrals from up to 7,500 estate agency branches around the country.

Joe Slavin, chief executive at fish4, said it initially got involved in Tesco Property Market as it thought it would give its customers' property adverts maximum exposure.

But he said that since the launch, the company had "received valuable customer feedback and we have decided that our involvement with the site, in its current format, is not in the best interest of our clients".

Spicerhaart, one of the South-east's largest group of agents and a member of the fish4homes network, has already pulled all online advertising of its housing stock from the site due to concerns that it would conflict with its own business.