Why are people so intent on using an estate agent to sell their home when there is no longer any real requirement to do so? These days, even under a sole agency agreement, there is little to prevent a homeowner from doing a bit of extra legwork and selling the property privately in order to avoid paying commission. And if your efforts don't pay off, and the estate agents sells the property first, what have you really lost?

For many people, the fear factor is an huge barrier to taking on the sale of their property without using an estate agent. Fear caused by not really knowing how much work is involved. Fear of how much of their time it will take. Fear of getting the price wrong. Fear of knowing where to start in a lengthy process which is completely alien to most people and which requires the co-ordination of a variety of organisations.

However, perhaps the single biggest reason why homeowners have traditionally used an estate agent to sell their home relates purely to marketing and the ability to get the property details in front of a large number of buyers. But the landscape is now beginning to change for those who are aware of it.

The internet now provides the perfect medium for the DIY vendor to advertise their home to a huge potential audience at a very low cost. Recent surveys by Halifax have shown that more buyers (over 65%) than ever are using the internet to search for property, so all you need is the means to get your home on the internet. You don't need a computer to do this as there are many services which offer the private seller a complete package, if you know where to find them.

Unfortunately, with the opportunity comes a problem. Being on the internet by no means guarantees that the property advertised is visible. There are dozens, if not hundreds of sites that promote themselves as allowing a vendor to sell their home for little or no cost.

However, we would suggest that before choosing a 'free to advertise' property site, homeowners need to consider carefully what they are likely to get 'for nothing'. You can be one of the fortunate ones whose property details end up being seen by the right potential buyer, but the fact is that this remains an unlikely possibility with many of the sites.

The problem is that most free sites are poorly marketed (due to inadequate budgets) and rely either on advertising for their profit (which gets in the way of the message and can be offputting to buyers) or reselling registered users' e-mail addresses for junk purposes - again this is likely to put off the majority of buyers searching for property from using such sites - the very target audience you need.

Consider the fate of perhaps the biggest and most well-known 'free to advertise' internet service, easier.co.uk, which until fairly recently relied upon selling its customer mailing list for profit. Despite substantial backing which allowed it a multi-million pound advertising budget, it was forced to close, because it was unable to make a profit from its free service. The point of this, is that you are probably going to have to pay and display. In the long term, few, if any of the free services will prosper.

There are a growing number of fee-charging sites that offer to list homes for the do-it-yourself seller, with photographs, a 'for sale' board and other services supplied for various fees. But how do you choose between them? We see there being three key points:

• Firstly, look for a site which offers their service to sellers anywhere in the UK and, most importantly, is able to attract buyers in all areas of the country. To do this, it needs to have a sizeable property database, with good overall coverage. Without this it is like having a great shop in a fantastic location, but with nothing on the shelf - no one is going to visit the site more than once. Another viable option is for a site to start as a regional service whilst they build up their user base and only then do expand geographically. This is fine, as long as they have the systems architecture to cope.
• Secondly, look at the design of the website and how the property details presented. Is it easy to find and search the website database? Is the site easy and attractive to use such that it will continue to attract buyers?
• Finally, consider the way the organisation works. Is there freephone (real world) assistance? How are buyer enquiries handled? How well connected is the site to the property market in general? In other words, will the business be efficient in making sure that enquiries are turned into sales.

If the site stands up to this check (and very few do) then it just might be worth parting with your cash. If it doesn't, then you are probably wasting your time and very probably your money as well.

Most internet buyers are now being channelled by massive TV and press marketing campaigns to a handful of household name high profile property services like Assertahome, Rightmove and Fish4 - these are 'portal' databases of properties held by estate agents. Normally the only way to get your property listed with these major players is by signing up to an agent's commission contract. However, one private service, quaintly named "The Little House Company", has negotiated arrangements to publish their properties on these and many other portals, charges just £89 and can be found at www.thelittlehousecompany.co.uk. Compared to one-off advertising in a local paper, this offers huge ongoing exposure in the mainstream market at low relative cost.

One reason why the number of private home sales is set to rocket is that buyers actually prefer to deal with the seller direct, as opposed to working through an agent. According to a recent Halifax market survey, buyers have greater confidence in what a seller tells them about the property than what an agent says. Honesty, it appears is alive and well - so when you are preparing details, it is important to live up to this by offer a genuine and accurate description, rather than an exaggerated one. This is likely to be better appreciated by buyers and saves wasting everybody's time.

There is no rocket science involved in writing a description, but when using the internet, it is better to think in terms of "marketing" (highlighting the features of the property - why is it so nice to live there) rather than bland "details". Try and sum up the whole property from the buyer's perspective 'in a nutshell', preferably in the first two sentences. Once hooked on the ad, buyers will then read the details.

One final point related to the several companies who now offer to build simple websites dedicated to your property, in order to advertise it for sale on the web. This is probably a futile waste of time unless you have an extremely high value home and time on your hands to market it. The internet property world is an extremely crowded one and unless you have considerable skill, the chances are no one will ever find your website. Instead, you should choose to use a site like The Little House Company, where for the same cost you have the possibility of many thousands of potential buyers viewing your details each day, as you piggy back on the multi-million pound marketing budgets of the industry's biggest players.