UKC

Hello

Looking to sell my flat and I was wondering if anyone has experience of using an online estate agent.
I'm keen to avoid paying a lot of money to a local estate agent, when I feel I can probably get as good a service using an online one, who will put the flat up on all the major websites.

I'm based in Ealing, London.

Any thoughts/advice?

Thanks

Jason

In reply to jasonC abroad:

We got purple bricks round, they valued the house at 75k when the 2 local agents put a value of 85k on it.
The feeling I got was price it cheap and sell it fast to get their money ASAP.
Might be wrong though.

For balance the local agent we are using has proved to be as useless as every agent I have ever used in the past.

In reply to Dax H:

Did you try any others, I am look at Telpio as well as the one you mentioned.
Would it be okay to ask what sort of% the estate agent is asking?

Thanks

In reply to jasonC abroad:

I have used one for rental and would do the same now for sale.

Pay someone for decent photos and a floor plan. Then it's cheap as chips to get an agent that will get it onto Rightmove, Zoopla etc.

They take the calls and then call you to do show-arounds.

We paid £75 in total for tenant find, agreement etc. rather than an ongoing 10-12%.

Most agents are 1.5-2.5% of sale price - several thousand on an average house. You can do it for a few hundred.

Get some valuations beforehand and do some of your own research on asking and sale prices and you can easily avoid the low-balling.

In reply to jasonC abroad:

No we didn't try any others.
Purple wanted a flat fee of £500 if I remember right but we had to sort our own solicitor etc.
The local agent we went with wanted £2500 but this was after telling us he had a list a mile long of people looking to buy that type of house in that area so after I pointed out it would be an easy sale with very little work on his part he dropped to £1900, that is all in. All fees and solicitors etc.
Could probably have got a better price shopping around but it's more manic than usual at work so it's worth a bit extra for less stress.

In reply to jasonC abroad:

I've used emoov and they were fine. £500 upfront or £1000 on completion, and our house sold within 24 hours so if we'd have gone with one of the local high street estate agents we'd have been paying them around £2900 - £3200 for a day's work!

I was happy to a) draft my own description and b) take my own pictures, which helped because the photos they took were rubbish. It's a basic service which suits people who don't mind doing a bit of the work themselves.

In reply to jasonC abroad:

In my experience, the real work estate agents do is after the sale, working with all the other agents in the chain to make sure that the sale actually happens. Not sure how discount agents handle that bit.

In reply to Jimbocz:

That's the solicitor's job. My experience is the agents just stick their nose in and make things worse in an attempt to justify over inflated fees.

Selling a house should be a set fee, not a percentage. It's an unskilled administration role pretending it's a profession. Conveyancing solicitors fees tend to be less than estate agent fees, why?

Estate agents are a habit, not an essential. I think people were a bit scared to use online agents during the recession and that combined with the low number of transactions the average person does in their life means it's been a slow market to go online. But it will. And we will all be so grateful.

In reply to jasonC abroad:





Yes, move out of Ealing.

In reply to jasonC abroad:
When my mother passed away, I had the task of selling her house. Two estate agents valued it for free, one said 180k the other said £220k and both told us a lot of lies. We employed neither.

A friend of a friend said they knew someone might be interested. I invited them round, the lady liked it and asked how much. I said £220k, and she asked to bring to her husband round.

Later the same day they returned, offered £210k and we shook on the deal. Agreed that our solicitors should take it from there.

Just sayin' like... you could advertise yourself, put your own home made sign up, etc, see what happens.

The solicitors, (well the solicitor's work experience person) does all the required work.

In reply to jasonC abroad:

Thanks for all the replies (apart from the one about moving out of Ealing).
I've got PurpleBricks coming to give a valuation on Saturday and will probably get a few more.

Jason

In reply to Dax H:

Despite the naff name MakeUrMove are very good. Have used them exclusively to market my rental property. Straightforward pricing structure so that you can choose from a simple tenant find (supplying your own photos and arranging the viewings), through to professional photography, accompanied viewings, up to full management at what seems a reasonable rate. Excellent website and service, too.

Peter