Now online: an auction site for resale homes

[SINGAPORE] A Singapore start-up - hoping to salvage close to $1 billion lost in property transactions here yearly - yesterday launched FindNest, a crowd-pricing platform that lets users auction off or bid for resale properties online.

The first-of-its-kind platform, with an open price bidding system similar to online marketplace eBay's, will help uncover the "true" valuation (as determined by the crowd, and not an assessor) of its listed properties, founder Joshua Koh told The Business Times.

He cited studies which showed that when agents sell their own properties, these are usually put on the market at least ten days longer and prices are at least 3 per cent higher than when they sell their customers' properties, leading to a loss of some $1 billion in transaction value yearly.