I want to be straight with you: I didn't build Howsold because I spotted a gap in the market on a spreadsheet. I built it because I watched people get destroyed by a process that was completely stacked against them — and I couldn't find a good reason why it had to be that way.
If you want to sell a property in the UK, the default assumption is: get an estate agent. Sign a contract tying you to them for 12, 16, sometimes 20 weeks. Pay 1–2% of the sale price whether the sale takes 6 weeks or 6 months. Accept that any buyer can renegotiate, pull out, or stall up until the moment of exchange — with zero financial consequence to them.
That's the model. And for decades, barely anyone questioned it because there wasn't an obvious alternative.
"The buyer can walk away the day before exchange and the only cost to them is mild inconvenience. The seller loses weeks, sometimes months, and often has to start the whole process again."
When I started looking properly at how property transactions actually worked — not how they're supposed to work, but how they play out in practice — I found that the incentive structure was almost entirely wrong from the seller's perspective. The estate agent gets paid regardless of speed. The buyer carries no commitment until exchange. The seller absorbs all of the risk, all of the time delay, and still pays the fee.
MMA isn't a new concept. It's been used by institutional sellers — housing associations, receivers, probate administrators — for years precisely because it solves the commitment problem. The buyer pays a non-refundable reservation fee on day one, securing the property exclusively for 56 days. They can exchange and complete at any point within that window — or walk away, forfeiting the fee.
That one change restructures the entire dynamic:
I'm based in Liverpool. The property market here is one of the most active landlord markets in the UK — high rental demand, strong yields by national comparison, and a landlord community that has been squeezed from every direction over the last five years. Section 21 abolition. EPC requirements. The Renters Rights Bill changing the eviction landscape. Tax changes hitting higher rate taxpayers. A lot of landlords want to exit, but they don't want to deal with a six-month sale with an agent and a buyer who keeps renegotiating.
MMA was made for this. And nobody was building it properly for the Liverpool and wider North West market.
Howsold is a specialist Modern Method of Auction platform. We don't do traditional auction. We don't hedge by offering both models. MMA only — because doing one thing properly is how you actually serve the people using your platform.
The business is built to be exited. I'm not building a lifestyle business or an agency. I'm building an asset with systemised deal flow, minimal founder dependency, and a scalable acquisition model. That transparency matters because it shapes how we operate — we make decisions that are right for the business long-term, not decisions that maximise short-term revenue at the expense of seller outcomes.
They build for the transaction, not the outcome. The estate agent's incentive is the commission. The portal's incentive is the listing fee. Nobody in the chain is specifically incentivised to get the seller the fastest, cleanest completion at the best net price.
MMA aligns the incentives differently. Speed is the product. Certainty is the product. The seller pays us nothing — our income comes from buyers competing for properties, not from sellers being locked into contracts. Sellers pay their own solicitor fees as with any sale — our recommended solicitors typically work on a no-sale-no-fee basis.
That's why I built it. And that's why it works.
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