Estate Agents

[Oceangirl82]

I am looking to put my house on the market with a High Street Estate Agent but my daughter has said to give Purple Bricks a try. Anyone tried Purple Bricks do you recommend or think they should be avoided?

I wouldn’t touch them.

Why do you want to pay for a service upfront when they do nothing for you?

You wouldn’t pay for building work upfront. Why selling your biggest asset?

Many many threads on here. Odd good experience but generally they seem to put off buyers massively and be a bit shit for the sellers too.

Sold last year. Find a good estate agent, go on recommendations. Ask about a sliding scale % on sold price.

I’m using them. Having bought and sold through high street agents who couldn’t answer the simplest question about a property, I’m much happier doing viewings myself. I know the house, the area and the details, rather than a Saturday temp whose never been there before and just gives you a piece of paper then says you have to go in 5 as they’ve got another viewing.

That said, haven’t had an offer, and don’t know how many more viewings we might have had through a high st agent, but we aren’t totally desperate to sell so £1500 vs 8k was a worthwhile try in our eyes.

Online platform easy to use, we were able to rewrite the copy, choose the photos etc.

Haven’t got as far as after sales, that could be car crash, but for now I’m pleased!

I wouldn’t touch them but then I’m biased as I work for an independent estate agent.

That said, I’m in Scotland and their ‘local agent’ for this area covers an area of about 100miles. The area I work in has a completely different market from that of 20miles up the road, which is different again from 30 miles up the road. Frankly, their ‘local agent’ knows fuck all about my local market.

A friend out with the area I cover used them and their property sat on the market barely viewed for a year. She switched to a high street agent and was sold within months.

But as I said, I’m biased 🤷‍♀️

Don't do it... don't forget the marketing of a property is equally important. Not just advertising but photos and 'selling' the house through the description. People think they can do better themselves but many purple bricks/Yopa adverts show differently also in our case our house sold before it went live to one of three viewers who were on the agents books and they knew would like it.

We were mostly advised against using them because you pay upfront so therefore they have no actual motivation to sell your property. However none of the people who we're giving out advice had any personal experience of using them. The only person I know who actually did use them was really pleased with the service they received.

We didn't use them in the end but viewed a house that was on with them and I did like the easiness of booking a viewing via the app.

It’s worth reading this before you pay up front propertyindustryeye.com/eye-newsflash-purplebricks-in-conversations-with-territory-owners-as-restructure-continues/

I tried to view a house through them and it was like pulling teeth and I gave up in the end, Put me off viewing anything else through them. The house we were trying to view was still on the market 6 months later despite being in a super popular area. They went back one the market with a new agent and infinitely better photos and sold pretty quickly.

We used Purplebricks last summer. They did everything for us - took all the photos, got them and a good description up on their website and Rightmove, did all the viewings for us. As soon as we went online, it didn’t seem to matter what agent we used. We sold pretty much immediately. But we were in a sought after area in a city centre location in Scotland. I loved using the online portal to see all the interest etc!

I buy and renovate and sell on properties for a living, so use many different agencies. I dislike Purple Bricks and it puts me off viewing any homes through them. The agent doing the viewing knows absolutely nothing. You make an offer online and rely on the seller to check and counter or whatever. The seller in one case never responded so had to call purple bricks who said they would call seller but to 'monitor the website'. No, you are getting paid you need to inform me. Useless.

We used purple bricks before after being messed around by a traditional estate agent. We had a really good experience with them but the feedback from viewers was that they weren't sure about listing as it was when purple bricks was relatively new to the world, a lot thought it was a repossession company or one of these that buy houses cheap and sell them on. Hopefully now people are more aware of them given all the advertising. However, the last time we sold, we actually went with the agent we bought from as he was still much cheaper than a 'traditional' estate agent and we knew from being on the receiving end of him that he is great at keeping things moving and pushing things through.

I went with a high street agent for my last sale (which was expensive, given it pretty much sold itself) but have viewed a few places through PB.

In my local area their listings always seem to be overpriced and are then reduced a few weeks/months later, so I would be wary of any valuations they do. I had one viewing via PB where the owner was completely unable to see that her house wasn't worth what she was asking for it - PB had valued it at the same price as she paid in 2007 and the market hadn't recovered anywhere near that level when I viewed it, but she wouldn't have it. It was still on the market a year later.