Everything a journalist needs to write about open for offer.

Gazumping isn't a quirk of the UK system — it's a symptom of the information vacuum buyers and sellers operate in. When neither side can see what genuine interest looks like, every offer is a gamble. A public, anonymised order book changes that overnight.

Most gazumping happens because buyers don't trust what they're being told about competing interest. If they could see every offer on a property — anonymised, timestamped, and verified — the temptation to game the process collapses.

The average UK home move costs more than ten thousand pounds before anyone has put a sofa on a removals lorry. Most of that cost is opacity tax — paying intermediaries to translate a market that should be readable by the people in it.

Estate agent commission alone can cost a homeowner the equivalent of a small car. The question we keep asking is: what is the homeowner actually getting in return for that fee, and could they get the same outcome — or better — for a fraction of the price?

Transparency in the property market doesn't mean exposing private data. It means letting buyers and sellers see the things that help them make a decision: real interest levels, real price history, real time on market. We publish those as a matter of principle, not as a paid feature.

The defining failure of UK property portals is that they confuse activity with information. A property page shows photos and a price. It tells you nothing about who else is interested, what they have offered, or whether the asking price reflects reality.

Estate agents are not the problem. The information asymmetry agents have historically been paid to manage is the problem. Once buyers and sellers can see the same data, the role of the agent shifts from gatekeeper to advisor — and a good advisor is worth paying for.

We don't believe in disintermediation for its own sake. We believe in choice. A homeowner should be able to sell their home themselves, with full marketplace exposure, for under ten pounds a month. They should also be able to hire a great agent on a fair fee. open for offer offers both.

Buyer credentials on open for offer are self-declared until the point of acceptance, when they are verified against Money Laundering Regulations 2017 standards. We label everything honestly: a self-declared budget is shown as self-declared, never dressed up as verified.

A buyer's privacy is protected at every stage. No buyer name appears on a public listing. Every offer is anonymised on the order book. Identity is only revealed when a seller accepts an offer and the parties consent to proceed.

The seller is always in control on open for offer. They accept, reject, counter or ignore any offer. There are no auto-accept rules, no forced timelines, and no hidden boosts for buyers who pay more. The platform facilitates — it never decides.

A homeowner's exact address is never shown publicly until they choose to reveal it. They can test the market for months without a single neighbour knowing the home is for sale.

Every market estimate on open for offer is grounded in comparable sales methodology — the same approach used by RICS-qualified surveyors. We publish the price range, the confidence score, and the data sources behind every figure. There are no black boxes.

We never call a market estimate a valuation, because it isn't one — a valuation is a regulated act performed by a surveyor. Our estimate is a transparent, methodology-led number that helps a homeowner understand their position before they decide what to do next.