I’m sure we’ve all had those moments where we encounter something new and wish we’d had the idea first ourselves? This happened to me a few months ago. Having worked in the world of property websites for a number of years I am all to familiar with who the ‘players’ are, who the strong independents are, who delivers and who doesn’t, and know all to well just how fragmented the marketplace is as a whole.

Having stepped away from this world I like to keep tabs on how they’re still performing and who the new players are. New sites emerge fairly frequently so it came as no surprise when I read in one of Global Edge’s mailers about LeadsAndAgents.com. By contrast though to other sites I have encountered recently, this one certainly caught my attention.

It’s fair to say a good few of us are familiar with auction sites such as Ebay, so it comes as a huge surprise that no-one had thought to apply this business model to a property portal until now - LeadsAndAgents do just that. The homepage has a list of subsections divided into regions with a number of active leads in brackets that can be purchased. Upon further inspection the leads contain good information such as budget, location & timescale which would allow an agent to accurately ascertain if they had a product for the potential enquirer. Then you simply bid against each other, and once the time has elapsed the highest bidder is forwarded the full contact details.

As mentioned, I encountered this back in the summer, and I have chosen to write about it now as I checked back this morning to see that they have, at time of writing, no leads at all. Why? Once can only point the finger at the turbulent times the property industry finds itself in currently, as surely something so innovative should really flourish in times such as these?

It’s all well & good for me to say that I wish I had this idea first and a few years ago, but what if the creators of this site had done just that themselves? It would be interesting to have seen how much market share a site such as this would have held back in the summer when I first encountered it.

Imagine a scenario whereby this time last year you are given a fictional, say, £500,000 and the question was asked of you just where you would look to invest it to make it grow. At the time I think I would personally have looked towards splitting it between a number of ‘emerging’ destinations such as Egypt, Romania, Belize, Argentina & the Philippines to name but a few options. Either way, it would have all found its way towards the property sector, perhaps diversifying into land, particularly in the case of Argentina.

Imagine also if the same question was asked of me six months ago. Uncertainty had begun to creep into the property industry, plus an increasing amount of agents threw everything at marketing to scrap for the reducing amount of enquiries out there. One this is for sure, my answer would have been different. Whilst I still might have looked towards the Central & South American destinations for a portion of this amount the remainder would have gone straight to the investment banks. It would have made sense. My money would always be safe with the investment banks, right?

So we return to the present time and I am still sat here with my (albeit fictional) half a million, and I am quite frankly panicking. Only a tenth of this would be protected by the government which would stand me to lose a lot of money if the markets continued their collapse. So my choices would be to move it abroad perhaps? But is there the need when it can willingly remain here? There are options.

There are always ideas that thrive in times of recession and in this particular scenario the prudent thing to do would be to seek securely package alternative investment products of which Discover And Invest has two such schemes, one long term one short. Investments secured by assets are few and far between, but if sought are worth looking towards – just make sure the provider can answer every question and detail regarding timescale and security. Surely if this can be achieved it is best to watch your money grow than be left within an institution in freefall?