Agency selling homes for free rolls out nationwide

The online agency Strike - which has a business model selling homes for free and relying on referral fees for revenue - has announced it’s rolled out nationwide.

“Hello, England! We're officially nationwide” the site has announced on its website over the Christmas long weekend.

“Now we have agents in London and everywhere around the country — we're officially nationwide” says the agency.

It continues: “We're trying to turn the entire estate agency industry on its head — and now we’re doing it with estate agents on the ground in London and around England. It's a big moment for us, and we couldn't be happier.”

The sell-for-free service launched in Yorkshire and the North West in June 2019, followed by Nottingham and the North East in 2020. More recently it expanded into the central region and had announced plans to go national by early 2022. This appears to have become reality a few days ahead of the New Year.

The agency, formerly known as Housesimple, aims to undercut traditional high street agents by offering vendors a free sales service; it claims this business model allows each vendor to save an estimated £3,800 on average.

Strike says its customers can control and manage the process of moving home via its mobile app, with the agent claiming to create a new, simple way for people to buy and sell

The Christmas statement says the firm has sold over £1.74 billion property in the last year, as well as being named the ESTAS Online Estate Agent for the second year in a row. 

“Strike is here to redefine the way we move” Sam Mitchell, chief executive officer at Strike, says. 

“Estate agency has remained largely unchanged for 200 years, with people feeling overcharged and underwhelmed, but we’ve been fighting to change that since we launched our sell for free model back in June 2019."

And he continues: “The ability to sell a home for free, without paying any agency fees, was always going to be well received, but maintaining a quality service is what has been key to our success and allowed us to continue to expand.”

In November Strike was declared the fastest-growing estate agency in the UK in terms of market share of new instructions by property data consultancy TwentyEA.

The consultancy’s year-on-year comparison report for the third quarter of 2021 showed Strike growing its share of instructions from 0.65 per cent to 1.07 per cent, an increase of two thirds.

This suggested it was boosting market share three times faster than its nearest rival, Haart.

TwentyEA suggested Strike’s gain was largely at the expense of Purplebricks, Yopa, Winkworth and Hamptons.