Mortgagee website a hit

Its owner, property investor and developer Richard Lancaster expects next year to be an even bigger year.  

“The banks have tightened up their lending criteria. Charging 20% deposits makes it hard for people to buy, but it also makes it hard to sell. I think there’ll be a lot more mortgagee sales over the next 12 months.”

Lancaster set up the site after being frustrated at having to trawl through several real estate websites to find mortgagee sales.

“When I was looking, it was quite hard. Creating one site, one search scenario was a way to amalgamate all mortgagee sales to make it easy.”
 
He also put himself in the situation of those people whose property was going to a mortgagee sale. “I would want my property to be very easy to find. Obviously the more people who know about it the better.”

One of the key differences offered by the site is a text alert service. Those registering interest in a property can log on and receive text alerts before the auction and on the day of the auction. “This gives them time to do their due diligence,” says Lancaster.

Lancaster says in the first month the site had 66,000 viewer hits, then in October it dropped to 52,000. However a change in advertising strategy to Facebook and Google saw 82,000 hits in November.