To think estate agents aren’t worth the money?

When I said “keeping things moving” I’m talking more about the conveyancing process and keeping the chain intact, not sales leads.

On both my last two transactions my lawyer did that, not the estate agent.

I used a local independent after being very unimpressed with EA's from chains that came to value our house and properties we looked at. Ours was worth his weight in gold, chased solicitors, buyers, vendor and worked his backside off to get a very stressful exchange over the line at the last hour.

Our estate agents normally charge 5% plus vat on properties starting at around 300k€ for a 2 bed apartment up to at least 1.5m€ for a 3-4 bed detached 😮

Plus they expect payment on exchange not on completion

We’re not in the uk

We spoke to our vendor’s EA at least weekly through our house buying process and they facilitated all comms through the solicitors. They knew nothing about the house when we viewed it, but that wasn’t where they added value.

Well I wouldn’t buy a house where the sale wasn’t being managed by an estate agent, so they’ll bring value in expanding your buyer pool, probably quite dramatically just by Rightmove listings alone.

We moved last year and our EA kept me sane. It was a long process from March to November with a house purchase and sale falling through in the middle of it. We were moving 150 miles away so it wasn’t easy but our EA liaised with our solicitor ( who was vile) other EA up and down the chain, kept pushing, having difficult conversations, giving us good advice, keeping us positive and was like a friend by the end. Can’t speak highly enough of her. She earned her commission.

You can. I am right now.
I listed my house on Visum, which directly posts it onto Rightmove.

I am doing my own viewings and plan to do my own Memorandum of sale.

There’s not much else that the estate agent does.

I think that if you tried to do it yourself, you'd soon realise that estate agents do more than you realise.

As I said earlier, mine saved me from spending £10k for no benefit, got offers from half of the viewers, and sold for £15k more than I'd dared hope for (which in this cheap area was roughly 8% more. Then of course all the hidden work that they have to do to get it to completion point, and nagging conveyancers.

When I bought my current house the vendor was a complete nightmare and dragged her feet over finding a property to move to. The Estate Agent was brilliant. He spent weekends driving her to view properties(!) and eventually found one she liked (she wanted to move to a town 50 miles away so this was quite an undertaking), helped sort out her chaotic paperwork and was generally a complete superstar, holding the chain together when it almost collapsed twice due to the vendor being an absolute twat. On the day we finally completed he was at the house to meet me with the keys as the vendor was there but completely drunk - at 11am. Don’t ask!

We recently sold my late parents house and the EA (a different one) somehow managed to make a house with 45 years worth of clutter and a bathroom and kitchen from the 1980s look presentable. I have no idea how he tidied everything away so effectively and took brilliant pictures and a video. I didn’t recognise the house in the listing?! On the first weekend he dealt with over 30 viewings and scheduled regular Zoom calls with me and my siblings to carefully go through offers and explain pros and cons of various buyers. He made himself available to us for any questions etc. We completed the sale in about 8 weeks.

I know there are rogue, awful EAs but if you find a good one then they are worth every penny.

This. Find a decent estate agent with an excellent chain chaser and it'll all be worthwhile.

We also sold for asking price in the worst possible market with a great local agent.

She was like Mrs Doyle from Father Ted but infinitely more sweary.

They have to go through Purple Bricks or similar. I have yet to successfully view anything advertised on Purple Bricks. Their admin teams just never get back to you.

My friend sold her house recently. She used a good estate agent who got her £50,000 more than she'd expected. Yes, the fees were £15,000. You have a choice .

Obviously, like most professions, there are bad and lazy ones out there; but a great EA is easily worth their fee.

Even if you're happy to write the particulars, take the photos, upload them to Rightmove (assuming they accept an ad from an individual), pay for Rightmove, deal with all of the emails and phone calls at all times of the day M-F 9-5, and show people around yourself...

You will find it extremely awkward to ask people for proof that they are ready to proceed and have the funds - and be insistent when they try to lie or swerve telling you about their true circumstances.

Potential buyers will try to offer you less, purely because there's no EA middleman; and they will have their eyes on the amount that you're saving by not paying a cut to the EA when they negotiate the price with you: they will expect their 'share' of that saving, so you might only save half as much as you anticipated. They will also likely massively overplay the 'huge' savings that you're making with no EA.

The EA will know the local timewasters, chancers and trouble-causers very well. Have you really saved anything if you end up waiting 6 months for your 'buyer' to resolve this issue and that issue and the other issue, when they know all along that they're playing the long game and aren't serious/able to proceed - either at all or without 'suddenly finding' that they can only go ahead by knocking a huge amount off the price they pay you, so you either take a huge hit or lose the house you're buying. These people can be very persuasive indeed when stringing you along, knowing that individuals will be far more likely to browbeat and overcome than a professional intermediary.

I'm obviously not suggesting that this will always happen, but when we were selling a deceased family member's house, the EA called us 'off the record'. It turned out that a local dodgy bloke had approached them with a remarkably good offer - as he usually did for each new house they listed - and tried to offer them a bribe to 'persuade' us to go with him. Apparently, his usual MO would be to pretend he was the buyer, but then the actual buyer would end up being somebody completely different. Also, he would come in with the best offer, fully intending to pay far, far less once he had his foot in the door.

Once, he'd gone to the EA's office and physically held him up against a wall, with his hand around his throat - in his determination to get a house for a song - and the police had to be called. Our EA - who was very friendly, professional, helpful and honest throughout (even when it would have been more profitable for him to have lied) - spoke to us (he wouldn't put it in an email for fear of potential repercussions) to say that, although they legally had to pass on all offers and that his was the best, just do not go with him, whatever we did.

Of course, then it became his problem to have to explain to this unpleasant, angry man that we had not accepted his offer - and to fend him off when he demanded to know what offer he had to make (clearly never intending to actually pay anything like it) in order to secure the house. If we had swerved the EA and advertised it ourselves, we would have gone with him, completely oblivious, and ended up with a huge amount of delay, heartbreak, awkwardness and possibly even threats and violence.

Personally, I wouldn't ask the question "Why don't I just sell it myself?"; rather I'd spend time to research the options, ask around (somebody did just that the other day on MN) and ask "WHICH EA shall I use?".

My Mum got 15k over her asking price ( North Yorkshire) …without the estate agent that would never have happened…..the photos were brilliant…..worth every penny

I think you're in for a shock. Leasehold properties aren't that in demand and they're harder to sell. They take more work also the valuation figure is that from Rightmove? Again they can be wrong.

The likes of Foxtons, Felicity J Lord, Hunters all the 'corporate ones' do tend to be worse from experience of buying.

Take a look on eXp estate agents I've found smaller independent are better. Or if you're in Tanya Baker's area sell with her, she's fab!

If they want to lock you into a long contract run and be careful of overvaluing if they overvalue especially a flat it will be sat on the market a while. Price competitively

A good EA accompanies viewings and keeps the chain together with a pokey stick. All whilst potentially not getting paid if the sale fails, or no offer is ever accepted.

I suspect Rightmove isnt cheap either, given how they've currently got the market tied up.

They probably do better than they deserve when the market is booming but selling now is probably pretty damn difficult

Agree with PPs. It’s not the advertising, photos, etc it’s pushing the sale through where they earn their money. Without our EA and the one further up the chain keeping the whole chain together and negotiating and getting the solicitors to talk to each other nothing would have happened. Although I grumbled about the 9k cost at the beginning, it was worth every penny in the end.

Our estate agent wasn't worth 50p. Having had the spiel and signed up to them, we had a roll call of Saturday jobbers who showed 2 or 3 people our home and knew nothing... After getting repeated queries about our 'position' from potential buyers, we ended up making a laminated sign and sellotapibg it to the living room window... (bullet points: 1. We are leaving on thus date. 2. We are moving abroad so chain free our end. 3. Epc is A. 4. Boiler last service 2021. 5. Boiler service certificate in kitchen drawer by cooker etc... 6. Nearest primary school St Andrews, 200m away, 3 min walk.

The agents were embarrassed as our sign was massive and fluorescent yellow with black letters (looked like a road sign) .. But it ended the endless queries.

Truth of the matter was we signed up with a manager but all viewings were via minions, with neither talking to each other.

It got v annoying. Did they earn their commission...? No. I don't feel they did.

As a PP has said, bar the rightmove ads and some OK photos I could do on my phone, I don't really know where the money went. There was nothing really that we or our solicitor couldn't do ourselves bar the rightmove ad, especially as we worked from home.

Yabu. Ours was worth their weight in gold....the sellers one... awful. Saying that I wouldn't look at anything not listed with estate agent

A good local independent agent can be fabulous.

We used one to sell a probate house - asked her for a probate valuation, and within a few days she approached us saying that a local family had been into the office, the house would be perfect and could she show it to them?

Because we didn’t have to go to market she volunteered to drop her fee, put us in touch with brilliant cleaners and just made the whole thing go through with minimal stress.

Completely agree. They are a complete rip off and are always mildly rude, clearly interested in the quickest chain so negotiate for their interests. Often offering silly valuations to dupe homeowners into signing.

We used a local company to try and support a non national, they used a mobile phone with really bad light reflections, got aggressive when I pointed out that the description of our village was vastly outdated and incorrect in terms of facilities listed, they didn't show anyone round despite that being our specific fee arrangement due to personal circumstances.

They were incredibly pushy and when we had survey questions on our purchase property, they said to be careful not to ask questions on a survey as it is "annoying"!! They wouldn't take our keys so we had to sort all of that out.

They ruined our experience of our 3rd purchase and it was just after the birth of our child. Never again will i use a local firm. We had marginally better experience with a national firm before but had to correct spellings and again they barely did anything with our buyer contacting us directly for much 9f the process.

In my mind with AI to be used for photos, wording and with homeowners doing the viewings i cannot see what lies ahead for them with the extortionate fees. I can't even say that they negotiation is something most do well as I've increasingly heard of homeowners and even solicitors taking over.

YANBU but no poll. Never dealt with an EA that did more than I could do myself. Everyone I know has always conducted viewings themselves.

Useless at chasing up and their listings are usually full of spelling and grammatical errors.

I agree with this. If you go with a cheap conveyancing solicitors what you get is paralegals being overseen by conveyancing solicitors. If there are issues they can’t or will take far more time to deal with them.