Shropshire Star Tuesday March 21st

New Website could help sale of houses

By Deborah Collins

A Telford mother has set up a new website aimed at ‘cutting out the middle man’ for people in the borough who want to sell their homes. Jacqui Maclean from Wellington set up the website, www.housewolf.co.uk after her brother Ian Stretton encountered problems as he tried to sell his Newdale home. And now mother of four Mrs Maclean who has never set up a website before, is encouraging buyers and sellers to log on.

“My brother decided he wanted to sell his house and was moaning about estate agent’s fees and I said to him I was sure he could sell his house online,” she said. “If you sell through an online site you are cutting out the middle man, you don’t need the estate agent so you are saving money.When we started looking at websites, we noticed that houses in the area are scattered across a number of sites and I decided that Telford needed its own dedicated website, so that buyers would not have to do lots of detective work to track down their dream home. I’m just hoping it will give local people who want to sell their homes somewhere to go.”

 Mrs Maclean’s website went live a month ago and has already attracted more than 800 hits. She said she and her four sons aged between 6 and 14 years had enjoyed learning how to set up a website together. The site took five weeks to set up from scratch and she now has five people trying to sell their home on it, including her brother who has already been approached by a buyer. “I’m really pleased,” she said, “I’ve had a great time setting it up, the kids have had to get their own tea more than once I’m afraid but we are all really proud of the results,” she added “I found building the website really exciting.”