The eBay website is best known for auctioning junk salvaged from lofts and garages. But in between adverts for a Real Madrid football strip at £12 and a typewriter for 99p, browsers could recently find a 500-year-old farmhouse with a starting price of just under £1m.

Louise and Robert Layton had their Cornish home valued by a local estate agent but advertised it on eBay to try to attract a wider range of potential buyers. “A house at this price will probably be bought by somebody outside Cornwall because local wages aren’t very high. So we want people around the country to see it and eBay is a cheap and effective way,” says Louise, who runs a livery stable.

Husband Robert, who owns a charter diving business, regularly buys and sells on eBay, which levies a fee for sellers on a sliding scale according to the reserve price of the item on sale. Sellers file an advertisement including a written description, photographs and the minimum price they will accept.

There is usually a 10-day period for would-be buyers to contact the seller by e-mail for more details, and then to place a bid. If a deal is done, payment is made through a third-party system that checks the buyer’s ability to meet the sale price.

The Laytons’ farmhouse on the Lizard peninsula has five bedrooms and 14 acres of grounds including an equestrian centre, a three-bed converted barn and two apartments that could be let. The property has been put into two 10-day auctions, costing about £40 each time. The family received about 1,000 inquiries throughout the UK but no serious offers.

Now the couple say they will put it back on eBay in the new year. If they find a buyer they insist they will ask an estate agent and solicitor to handle the sale for them. “There are too many security issues and hassles involved in visits and the full sale process to do it all ourselves,” says Louise.

There have been UK properties with reserve prices of more than £8m on eBay, while American estates have been sold on the global version of eBay for more than £10m. Although the internet is widely used by estate agents, past attempts by individuals to sell their homes online have had mixed results. There are often up to 60 UK properties listed on eBay but few produce bids close to the sellers’ reserve prices. Site fees are much lower than those of estate agents but online sellers have to arrange visits by potential buyers if they are requested.

In September, Applecross, a Scottish housebuilder, held an online auction to sell eight apartments in an Edinburgh development. Only two were bought, although they included one taken by a Far East businessman who had never visited the city. The reserve price on each flat was £420,000, yet Applecross says the two sales netted the firm more than £1m.

Now internet “sales consultants” are springing up to try to improve the presentation of properties put on eBay and other auction sites. Christian Braun is managing director of Auctioning4U, a firm that takes photographs of properties that sellers want to advertise on eBay. It also completes the online forms that have to be submitted by sellers. He charges a £250 listing fee for a property, plus a further £500 fee if it sells.

“The first nine days of a 10-day eBay auction are just for looking or making inquiries with sellers, so bids at that stage always appear low. The last hour and final few minutes see the very competitive bidding that can create high prices if something is promoted properly,” he claims.

The Laytons, who are not using a professional website promoter, are undeterred by the absence of a high bidder so far. They have encouraged a friend to advertise her home on eBay for £325,000; within a few days she arranged a viewing for a would-be buyer. Louise says: “We hope to get the same result when we put our home on the site again in January. We only need the right person to be online at the right time.”

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