To ask if anyone sold house without estate agents?

[gardenangels]

Really think what they charge is too high

No, but I bought a house from someone who did. Never again. At least with an estate agent you have a buffer between the vendor and purchaser when things get complicated.

Friend tried to for year with an online one. She didnt have a single viewing. Went to ea and sold within weeks. Updated on fb on a daily basis for a year.....

We just made an offer on one that is one with an online agent. Don't know how good they are yet!

I bought a house without using an estate agent. Was the easiest purchase I've ever been involved with!

We bought our current house without an estate agent - very easy, I would do the same again given the chance. We wanted to move to a particular area, put flyers through doors with our contact details, a house owner wanted to see. He had 2 valuations and we met in the middle, he was able to save on estate agent fees so and if he has sold through EA at the higher valuation he wouldn't have anymore on his own pocket so we both benefitted from this.

It's not just the listing on Rightmove etc that an EA does, they also should follow it right through to completion acting as a mediator between buyer and seller (if you get a good one).

Also how will you feel about giving your number out publicly? What about doing viewings? Will you go out and let people wander round so they can take their time or would you (and kids / pets etc) be there?

If you are letting strangers into your house then this site is good for personal safety tips (set up by the mother of an Estate Agent who was murdered by someone who came to view a house):

www.suzylamplugh.org/personal-safety-tips/free-personal-safety-tips/

If you decide to use an online agent then check the small print carefully - purple bricks invoke a charge after 6 months (I think) regardless of whether you sell or not so there is no incentive for them to help you sell - in fact I think they charge £50 or so do to viewings.

I've sold with a high street estate agent and also with House Network, who are online. I didn't notice much difference between the service the two provided, both did photos, both got listed on Rightmove, etc. We had to do our own viewings for both, estate agents had apparently supposed to do them but never did, we werent showed around by an agent at any of the houses we viewed either. The online agent was loads cheaper and we were really pleased with them. This was about 5 years ago so their prices may have gone up I guess.

Yes. We were about to list and had people knock on the door saying they had heard we were selling. It was a very easy sale and saved us about 4-5k. All the estate agent does is sort out viewings. The other stuff is done by the solicitors.

I sold my ground floor flat to the people who owned the upstairs flat without using an EA. It all went very smoothly.

We just sold through an EA, the one thing they are good at is getting people through the door. Almost 20 viewings in one day and five offers going to sealed bids. They got us significantly over the asking price - more than making up for their fee. Obviously our area is very buoyant, but we wouldn't have got this price if we had sold it ourselves.

We used house simple. Accepted a very decent offer on the first day (!)
Been really impressed with their post offer care and communication - 7 days a week (although obviously it's not sorted until contracts exchanged and completed).

Sold ours by ourself by word of mouth. Legalities done through a notary public.
Both the market and location were good.

Yes, we sold our first house to our neighbour's son, they had tried to buy it 5 years previously when we bought it, but couldn't afford it. We also sold a flat to our tenants as they asked to buy it, so quite lucky with those two. Have also sold three other houses using estate agents, and would again unless we got lucky.