Frequently asked questions

If you are buying, search or register what you would pay. If you are selling, add your home and see who is already bidding. You can browse without an account. The help button at the bottom right will show you around any page.

No. A bid is an offer, it is free, and it is not binding. You also keep the right to view the home before anything is committed. Nothing becomes serious until an owner accepts and both sides put down a refundable deposit.

Both sides put a refundable deposit behind the agreed price, so that neither can walk away lightly. You can view the home if you want to. You then agree the main terms of the sale in a short document, and each side instructs a solicitor. The solicitors run the legal checks, contracts are exchanged, and on the agreed day you complete and get the keys. The bar at the top of the buying and selling pages shows where you are.

A short, plain agreement between buyer and seller that records the price and the main conditions, such as the timetable. It is not the legal contract. It is what lets the solicitors start work knowing both sides mean it.

Exchange is the moment contracts are signed and the sale becomes legally binding; from then neither side can pull out without penalty. Completion is the day the money moves and the keys change hands, usually a week or two later.

The price an owner would like bidding to start from. It is a signal, not a promise to sell at that figure, and bids can come in above or below it. Many homes here have no guide price at all, because the owner has not decided to sell. You can still bid.

It comes from the national Energy Performance Certificate, graded A (cheapest to heat) to G. The certificate also gives the floor area and the age of the building. It is an assessor’s survey from one day, sometimes years ago, so treat it as a guide and check it when you view.

A mark that the person who lives at the home has joined the exchange and proved they are there, so a bid on it will reach a real person. Where there is no mark, you can still bid. We hold your offer and pass it on if the occupier ever joins.

It tells us what you would pay, and for what. We then approach owners who match it and who are not currently on the market, including by knocking on doors. That is the whole point: most of the housing stock is not for sale on any given day, and nobody has ever had a way to tell the owners what they are being offered.

Yes, on as many as you like. If one is accepted your other bids are paused automatically, so you are never committed to two purchases at once. Tell us you are buying more than one and they all stay standing.

A mortgage agreement in principle, or evidence of available capital, checked by us. Vendors filter on it because it is the difference between an offer and a wish, and it lets you skip straight to heads of terms, which takes about three weeks out of the process.

Listing is free and bidding is free. We charge 0.1% of the agreed price to each side, with a minimum of £200, and only when contracts exchange. Offering your property to every buyer whose registered requirements it meets is £99.

No. There is no commission, no sole agency agreement and no six-week tie-in. You see every bid as it arrives and you decide which to take.

Once a price is agreed we hold a refundable deposit from both sides. If the transaction falls through, the party responsible is liable for a share of the other side’s costs, drawn from that deposit. If you both agree to stop, or to exchange at a different figure after a survey, both deposits come back in full.

National search on capital, exposure and yield; identification of owners holding more than one asset; bidding across a whole result set; and the sell-side data room.

Yes. Under Professional, choose Sell to list several properties as one parcel with one price; buyers see the totals and areas, never the addresses, and offer for the whole of it. On the buying side you can offer on a parcel, or bid across a search result rather than property by property.

Signed out, you see the street and the first part of the postcode. That is enough to understand the market and not enough to turn up at somebody’s door. Sign in and you see it in full.

You see how contested a property is, banded rather than counted. The exact number of rivals is the one thing a bidder is entitled to keep, and publishing it would change how people bid.