Immogo is a French property advertising site run by SFN member Gregor Hakkenberg and his colleague Eduard Damman. They've been running the site, which currently attracts 50,000 unique visitors per month, since 2005 and are well ranked by the major search engines. They attract visitors from the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, Germany and Switzerland as well as France, so it really does give sellers an excellent chance of selling their French property. With the current strength of the pound against the euro, British buyers are an especially good proposition for anyone currently selling.
Everyone loves a bargain and (almost!) everyone agrees that estate agency fees can be exorbitant, so using Immogo helps keep both buyers and sellers happy. Immogo offers buyers the chance to find properties that will often be considerably cheaper than those listed by a traditional agency and vendors the opportunity to pay a low, fixed fee or percentage of the sale price.
Unlike most traditional advertising sites, Immogo gives vendors a personal property page, complete with unlimited text and images, a blog area and a secure contact form on a well-ranked multilingual site. Until now, Immogo has charged a mere 1% (yes, you did read that right) fee on any successfully completed sales. However, following feedback from clients, they are now offering a second option.
This is a fixed fee package. The cost is a very reasonable 295€ for the first year and includes a fully search engine optimised presentation, unlimited images and text, professional editing of your description, free translations for your target audiences, a link to your own website if required and publication on international property sites.
Most buyers prefer to buy direct from the owners as they know that they are cutting out the middleman and thus saving money, so if you are thinking of selling your French property, or even have it on the market at the moment, then do give Immogo a try. However, if you're reading this thinking “But I don't want to sell my lovely French home! And anyway, how does this help me earn some extra cash?” then read on...
Immogo have recently launched their ambassador programme. If you have friends, neighbours or acquaintances who want to sell their property, then simply send them along to the Immogo website. Any sellers you refer who go on to successfully sell their property via the site, will earn you 20% of the Immogo commission. For example, you refer a friend who sells his property via Immogo for 400,000€, Immogo gets 1% or 4000€; bear in mind that with a traditional agency, this could be around 7% (so 28 000€º or up to 10% and thus a whopping 40 000€. Using Immogo and not a traditional agent effectively allows the seller to 'reduce' the property price by 36,000€ at no cost to themselves. This could make all the difference in securing a sale and is why buyers tend to prefer private sales.
Once Immogo has received their fee, they will then pass on the 20% referral fee, which in this case would be 800€. If you refer a friend who chooses the fixed fee option, you also get a fixed fee payment of 50€. Admittedly, this isn't a massive amount but then neither is 295€ so I would imagine that it will be pretty easy to convince anyone selling a property to use the site. And 50€ is not at all bad given the effort involved. I think this sounds like a fairly easy way to make some extra money and Immogo are currently looking for people who are ready to treat this as a part time occupation and go actively looking for sellers. Immogo will provide their ambassadors with individual referral codes and full colour leaflets explaining the whole procedure.. As an ambassador, you simply ask the seller to use this individual referral code. They will get a discount and you get credited with the referral fee. Simple! Given that most of us know more than a few people who are either buying or selling French property, it's surely worth a try? But don't just take my word for it, go and have a look for yourselves!