Would you use an Estate Agent to sell your home who doesn't advertise on Rightmove?

For the 2m+ market then maybe.

You need a valuation to get a mortgage so if the buyer is going to have to borrow there will need to be some kind of assessment done officially. When i put notes through doors it was not to do a deal unofficially or get a cheap deal, it was to find unavailable property more quickly and possibly buy without the property having to be advertised.

Absolutely no way

There was a thread a little while back about people putting notes through the letterboxes of houses they were interested in buying, should the owners happen to be interested in selling.

That was one of my big concerns too: how can you possibly know that the price you arrive at privately is not way less (or indeed way more) than you could have got/paid on the open market?

Maybe if it was Tesco, who had done their research and were determined to have your exact location for a new store, whatever the price; or if Elon Musk set his heart on it for whatever reason and gladly told you to name your price.

But in the real world, the vast majority of sellers realise that they won't get much more than the market dictates; and most buyers know they won't get an astonishing bargain that's well below market value.

No to RightMove. Yes to Zoopla. Rightly or wrongly, RightMove are the Hoover of house sales and I wouldn't bother if my house wasn't on there.

A lot of the agents websites are awful,

I'm looking at buying in a particular area at the moment and honestly wading through the agent site to get the info I need it is a nightmare.

(Disabled, need a ground floor flat)

Your idea might work. In a busy market if you have buyers etc. but you'd need a good website of your own.

No

Absolutely not.

we put ours up and didn’t bother with a sale board. No one goes driving around these days. People scroll rightmove.

The city I live in has a different first place to look, that isn't Rightmove, so it can be a bit redundant. However, I don't think this is the kind of social change a single estate agent would be able to force, if the part of the country you are in has this as a default.

There's a question above asking what someone could do if they saw a "for Sale" sign and didn't go straight to Rightmove, would they have to go to the home owner. If I saw a for sale sign, I would google "For sale, such and such street, city name" and it would show up whatever the agent.

If you google property/house for sale in <city> the local site comes up beside rightmove. I reckon most people selling here if they had to choose they would opt for the local option over Rightmove. It is the “go to” and has thousands of properties on it.

Before the internet, and even still, at least in cities Estate agents tended to have their bricks and mortar offices very close to each other so it was easy to window shop that way - Rightmove is the online equivalent. And the shop window advertising was backed up by newspaper advertising, so really all Rightmove is is the digital equivalent of that, but with a much wider and more accessible reach.

And no, I wouldn’t go with an agent who didn’t use Rightmove.

Does everybody from outside the area who is looking to move there know about the local version of RM?

Or is it a local village for local people only?!

I think it depends, as a seller I wouldn't care how the agent find the buyer. When demand is high, our local agents have a list of potential buyers they know are procedeable and reliable. They wouldn't advertise immediately on Rightmove or Zoopla if they have interested buyers.

I guess I would want some kind of clause in the contract that says that if you as the agent cannot provide a minimum of 4-5 offers within the first couple of weeks, or if the first accepted offer fall through, then you will advertise on Rightmove etc.

As a buyer, I only look at Rightmove though.
I'm also wondering how potential sellers would find you? We only know the agents we met through our renting and buying experience, and would be hesitant to trust anyone we've never work with before.

The point of rightmove is that it shows everything; from all agents, in one place. I'm confused about why you're calling rightmove to arrange viewings / get information.

Definitely not.

Who are you calling?! Rightmove is a platform for agents, not a middleman.

Surely, even if people do walk by a house they like and see a for-sale board which sparks their interest, they would then go to Rightmove for photos and details? Or would people prefer them to knock on the door and ask the householder?

I know you could make a note of the specific estate agent and look on their website - but they're usually much less user-friendly than RM; and some will just link straight to RM on their own websites anyway.

I might use them as part of a multiagency contract or if the contract was really short- 2 weeks head start for example. I think its a business strategy (not one I'm convinced by) and so the agent should take the risk here, not me. There's no way I'd be signing a three month sole agency on this.

Advertising usually encourages more interest which in turn makes a higher offer more likely. My parents’ house is currently on the market, and advertised through Rightmove and other platforms. Last year’s unadvertised, private sale fell through at the last minute and the offers received so far after advertising have been far higher than the figure agreed with the private buyers.

We have a couple of local agents who operate like this. I think it really does limit buyers to those who already know the area, at least well enough to know those agents exist and be on their mailing list if not be on local social media. Otherwise you’re cutting out anyone from further away and/or not on social media (and a lot of people I know are no longer using FB for example).

As a seller looking to list it would depend entirely on what I thought the market was for my home and how quickly I wanted to sell it, to save on the fees. You’ll lose a percentage of potential sellers.

I'm in a completely different demographic from what you're describing but my pov still might be relevant. I'm looking to move and currently can't deal with RM. I'm not getting anywhere - I ring the number, nobody answers. Or they take details and nobody returns the calls. On the other hand, I ring the agent directly and get the answers/viewings. I don't see the point of the middleman so I cut him out. I wonder how many vendors would feel if they knew potential purchasers weren't being introduced

I think if you have a niche property/location it isn’t outside of the realms of possibility. But for 99% of people it just doesn’t make sense not to be marketing your property adequately.

Estate agents are very unregulated in this country as it is, I wouldn’t be impressed by someone trying to cut even more corners.

But nobody is saying that Rightmove is the only way; just by very far the most popular one.

You can have your house on Rightmove and still end up selling to somebody who only found out about it exclusively of RM.

In my village, I guess the market for this would be the people who sell their houses privately to save on agents' fees. So I guess if you were cheap enough you'd attract those sorts of clients. Typically they're also concerned about incomers pricing locals out of the market, holiday homes etc., so if you were also able to find them buyers who were local families actually wanting to live in the village full time, that would make your service more attractive. But on the other hand lots of people from elsewhere want to move into the village and those people are using rightmove, so I'm not sure this would be a viable business model here.

No, I would want it on Rightmove as I think a wider audience would ensure the best sale price