To balk at £27k estate agency fee and consider the online alternative

[lemsiptime]

We live in silly-house-price land - aka Greater London, and the modest Victorian mid-terrace house we bought 14 years ago, and extended, is now worth an eye-watering £900K.

Our DCs are approaching their teens and shooting up in height so we want to move to something a little bigger, slightly further out. We've had one estate agent round so far, and their fee is 2.5%+VAT which works out around £27.5K . To me that seems completely excessive, and could influence whether we're able to afford the step up to a bigger property.

I've read loads of bad reviews here on Mumsnet and MoneySavingExpert about Purple Bricks, and they don't seem to have many properties around our way (3 in a 2 mile radius) suggesting they're not exactly booming in popularity, but there's a huge difference between their flat fee (£1199) and £27K. I'm aware there are other online agencies too. AIBU to be tempted by that route? If so, please tell me what the more traditional estate agent will do for their money as I need to be convinced.

Wow, never thought we could negotiate the fee. Glad I asked! And yes bibbitybobbityyhat, it was Foxtons!

We are paying 1% plus vat. DD lived in a very cheap area and her agent (part of the same chain as ours) charged a flat rate. Hers earnt their money. So far ours isn't.

I've never understood the crazily high estate agent fees. What do they actually DO for their money?

We sold our house with 'house network' - cost us £500 and they were excellent.

Foxtons came round to ours to do a valuation. Couldn't get rid of the bloke. He said that they were so focused on selling that they would work really long hours to sell our property and would be quite happy to do viewings at 9pm.

Well they might, but I wasn't.

We paid 1.25%, which was (after DH haggled a bit) the middle of 3 we got in to quote and seemed the most proactive. But we're in the south west so the difference between the online ones and a proper agent isn't nearly as great (in our case about £1k more, which was so so worth it), they ring round their list to drum up interest, filter time wasters and do all the viewings, and in our case were invaluable in holding the chain together so paid for themselves.

Lemsip - do you want to buy ours?! 4/5 beds, 30 mins on train from central London, £425k and its yours, with free river walks and your own view of fields!

Wh-wh-where is your house Bunny

We've sold two houses by sticking a board outside. You could get one made for a few quid if you want it to look a bit more professional.

We live in a pretty desirable area but it's not London. When we did sell with an agent, we were expected to do our own viewings anyway, and I took all the pics because theirs were shite.

You've nothing to lose really, by putting your board up for a few weeks, surely?

I used House Network to sell a flat in London. I didn't use their valuer but set the price myself after getting various valuations from a number of estate agents. They were very good, and it cost less than a thousand. They were good once someone made an offer, and shortly after that the solicitor takes over anyway. I reckon I saved myself about 10K!

I commented on a thread on b1er1e about purple bricks last week. Wouldn't go anywhere near them. There's a reason they are cheap!

Like others have said, haggle!and contact other estate agents. For the price of your house I'm sure they would be willing to drop the percentage.

I would think that, these days, if you hd a sellable house, then being listed somewhere like rightmove or zoopla would be sufficient. Do people even trawl around high street estate agents any more?

If purple bricks or similar doesn't work out, then you can list elsewhere.

Oh, and our friends are on with Purple Bricks and are having a total nightmare with them.

We sold our house with 'house network'

And we bought our house with house network. Absolutely no complaints.

I should add, purple bricks themselves aren't bad but if you use them you have to use their solicitors. That is where the problems were, and there were lots and lots of them.

Herts/beds border JeffyI can pm you Rightmove link :-)

But yeah, maybe not actual Purple Bricks, on reading TFT. Not the first grumbles I've heard about them.

definitely haggle-also make sure you know what yore paying a percentage of

my dsis just found out her fee was the valuation price not the sold price-she complained that this wasnt made clear and got it reduced

Most people find homes via Rightmove. If you make sure it's priced and presented well it should sell itself - you just need the online listing.

We spent just £275 for Turtle Homes to list us on the portals. They gave us a discount as we had our own floorplan and photos, and wrote our own description.

We sold within 3 weeks but this rate would have covered 6 months marketing. They rang us straight away to arrange viewings, negotiated for us and handled everything really professionally.

We saved thousands and I would recommend them (or House Simple) every time.

lemsiptime you can't negotiate with Foxtons. I've sold with them a couple of times. They are aggressive in their selling but usually get the asking price / very close. It's worth getting a couple of other local agents round and see what they value it at and what they will do for their fee - that kind of house in London generally sells quite well and if it doesn't you can always rethink, especially if you're not in a hurry ...

Foxtons are dreadful. Local agents are much better. It should be fsirlt obvious from looking at local streets who the decent agents are. Their signs will be the ones you keep seeing.

Foxtons don't negotiate on fees. It seems to be a point of pride for them.

you could almost get a house for that, here.
Well, you could actually get a shell, still standing well, with potential.

It's like another world. Oh how the others live.
It's a colossal amount of money, I'm so glad you are questioning it OP.

2.5% seems like a very high commission, especially for such an expensive house - it takes the EA the same amount of work to sell a £900k house as it does a £200K one.

Definitely worth shopping around your local agents. You've got much more leverage to negotiate if they know that there's competition for your business.

We had this a few days ago, we were all set to go with an online agent then when DH went to bed I was up till 3am thinking about it and suddenly it dawned on me that maybe I wouldn't be able to handle doing the viewings etc and keeping my cool (I know some online agencies have accompanied viewings though), but the two main reasons I came up with to go with a local agent were:

• Can go into the office and find out what's going on if things become complicated e.g buyer turns out to be a time-waster
• Can arrange a staggered commission structure, we are going with our local agent and also in London and have negotiated 1%+VAT to 30K below asking price, 1.3%+VAT 10K below asking price and 1.5%+VAT at asking price. I think this gives them incentive to get a good price whereas if you pay upfront it worries me if they'll have the incentive but I do think online estate agencies have a reputation to harness so that will help them achieve a good price to a degree....

Ultimately for me, we found a good local agent that seem trustworthy although I'll probably be eating my words in a few months time and wish I'd saved a bunch of cash by going with an online one!!!