Web businesses seek to bring together homeowners and buyers, and cut estate agents out of loop

THE letters usually begin: "We know your house isn't on the market, but if you are ever thinking of selling please let us know, we love your street", a little postcard that gets homeowners thinking: "How much could my house be worth if someone wants it this badly?"

Now a new website hopes to offer the electronic equivalent to househunters keen to buy in specific areas or even specific homes on certain streets.

Blockhunter.com,which launched earlier this month, has no properties for sale, just a Google map onto which interested buyers register their interest and hope that homeowners gets in touch with them.

The site has the potential to cut out estate agents altogether, claims creator Andy Martin. "Blockhunter works the other way around from normal property sites. You put in the places you are interested in living in and then property owners can gauge what interest there is in their area. People who weren't thinking of selling at all might well see the interest there is in their home and decide now is the time to sell.

"I hope that buyers and sellers can build real trust by using the site - if you go online and see that four or five people are interested in buying in your street you can cut out the menace of estate agents altogether and save yourself hundreds if not thousands of pounds in fees buy selling directly."

Technology-watchers call sites such as Blockhunter part of the growing movement of "Intention 2.0" companies, which de-mystifies the market by allowing consumers to tell the world what they intend to buy.

In Finland, the Netherlands and the US property intention websites are already booming, and are gaining credit for making house-buying far more transparent.

FinnishwebsiteIgglonowhas pictures of every building in Helsinki combinedwithmapsandsatellite images listed on their site allowing interested buyers to make an unsolicited offer on any house in the city. If the house is sold through Igglo the fee is less than 2%, far less than Finnish estate agents would normally charge. Attracting 50,000 hits a week the company is looking to expand across Europe.

In the US, BuyerHunt and Zillow allow homeowners to post a price for their house online and buyers can contact them anonymously.

The average cost of a home in Scotland is now £138,655. House prices in Scotland are an average of 22.4% on this time last year, double the UK average.

Mark Hordern of the Glasgow Solicitors Property Centre (GSPC) said that while the Blockhunter site is "a really interesting idea" it is unlikely to massively shake up the market.

"If you are potentially thinking of selling your home and see there is interest in your street from Blockhunter, you could of course choose to sell to someone from the site - however, you would reach several times that many people my using an estate agent, unless Blockhunter becomes universally used."

At the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre (ESPC) David Marshall was also dubious. "This is basically a new twist on an old idea. Some potential buyers have long been willing to register interest in properties not currently on the market either by post or even by simply knocking on doors of homes which catch there eye.

"Potential sellers should also bear in mindthatwhile offers they receive through such a website may appear to be very tempting, by bringing it to the market anyway they will clearly be exposing it to a far great number of potential buyers, and thus could still achieve a significantly higher selling pricethroughmoreconventional channels."

Martin said that Blockhunter will expand from house sales into the rental market, and eventually into land sales.

He said: "Everyone has the dream of finding a plot of land and building their own house, but it is notoriously difficult to access land deeds and see what is for sale.

"This way if there is a space or an old building that users think they could develop they can register their interest but cut out the middle man."