To use online estate agents?

[EmmsDad]

Continuing the saga of our house selling, I wonder if it was wrong of us to assume that people would NOT be put off going through an online estate agents if they wished to view our home?

We are not getting any interest and I have already had some bruising comments on another board regarding the presentation and pricing of this house. But someone did mention that aspect, so could it be a significant problem do you think?

We're in the process of buying with someone who's used purple bricks and it didn't have any effect on us viewing the property.

The thing for us has been the fact that a high street estate agent has an incentive to get the sale through as they don't get tenor comisaion otherwise. With purple bricks they get paid whether it sells or not and so for aspects where it would have been good for us to speak to the estate agent, we haven't been able to, or they've not been able to help.

I wouldn't deliberately buy through purple bricks again although I can see why someone would use them as they are much cheaper

I would say it depends on the local market and whether or not your house needs 'selling'. They're great for areas where the houses sell themselves, IME.

I tried to sell my deceased mum's house with Tepilo- they massively overvalued it, the agents doing the viewings (we paid extra) were useless and nobody had a clue about the area or any of the good things about the house. A shaved monkey would've done a better job.

Switched to a local agent and sold it (with a bit of a bidding war) within a week.

We actually had a really good experience selling with Purple Bricks.

We were for sale with a local agent for 2 months, and got a sale which then fell through 1 week before exchange. Our local agents did absolutely nothing to help us, and didn’t provide us any ‘service’ at all, aside from putting our listing on Rightmove. They didn’t conduct any viewings, vet buyers or give us any advice, and for that we would’ve had to pay them 1% of our sale price (around £2100).

In the end we took a risk and went with Purple Bricks. I think a lot of it depends on the PB representative for your local area and how knowledgable/helpful they are.

Ours was great, took some brilliant photos and we’d received 2 offers within 2 weeks.

We then managed the sale ourselves using the Purple Bricks platform.

I do agree with a PP to an extent, it’s great for areas where houses sell themselves. But our experience (in a relatively slow moving area) was that we got much more interest via PB in a couple of weeks than we got with our local agent. And we only paid them £850!

There's a huge difference between an online agent and a hybrid agent. Some online agents won't come out and value your home they'll just do an email val without even coming out. A hybrid agent has all the benefits of the online but with real local experienced people on the ground.

I work for a hybrid so I am pretty biased but think it's great. I'm self employed so my motivation to sell your home is referrals and reviews to build my local business. Having a for sale sign up for months on end doesn't do me any favours, I want to see a sold sign up on the street and I want you to be telling all of your friends and family what a great experience you've had with me, in hope that they might use me in the future.

The main benefit is the accessibility for you and your potential buyers. The highest traffic on RM and Zoopla is between 6&10pm weekdays when the traditional agents are shut so your buyers will have to wait until the next day to try and book, or if they see something on a Saturday afternoon will have to wait until the Monday - with online agents they can see something they like and book in a viewing within minutes!

You can view and amend your advert 24/7 and look direct at your performance reports and viewings history. Your not relying on an agent feeding you info which they may tailor to suit them. Same with offers, the agent can't put the one that suits them in the best light (for example if one buyer is doing their mortgage through the office and they will get extra commission from that).

having worked in the high street for years I feel a lot more productive being able to work when my customers and buyers need and want me to and not being restricted by office hours or having to stay in the office when everyone else is out on appointments. A lot of my customers work so I usually catch up with them after 7 if that's what they need, it works for them and I'm more than happy doing it.

With any business there will be agents in the high street, online or within a hybrid who are awful. EAs have a terrible rep because there are 'fly boys' out there but I think if you get a few out to value your home and start building a rapport you'll find one you like ( I hope!)

Oh god that post is so long sorry

Online estate agents simply can't offer you the service that local estate agents can. At least where I'm from anyway. I don't want to phone and get connected to some random in England to arrange a viewing or make an offer on a property local to me.

Also they say "no commission" but you will still get hit with a bill and they'll call it "advertising fees" or something along those lines. It will 100% be the same price or dearer than using an estate agent.

Obi..thanks for that, not too long at all, so much info.

All, thanks for those views. I'm with emoov and they do take on a lot of the sifting so I am told, but there was no local expert for valuation. Been on the market for over a month now, no interest. It may be as mentioned this house will not sell itself.

Main hate is EAs who insist on a bank of conveyancers 200 miles from where you're sellling or buying. Many are overloaded and very slow and miss local knowledge on searches.

OP I wouldn't be put off by buying from an online EA.

I am wondering whether our vendor is tied in due to purple bricks with the conveyancer he has although may have been his choice of course

We currently have a property up for sale with PurpleBricks, in our (limited) experience we’ve found our “Local Property Expert” to be very keen and enthusiastic but wildly overpriced our house to sell (we need a quick sale but need to cover the mortgage & all fees as we’ve no savings) we knew he’d overpriced it and we told him so but he insisted he was correct. We’ve done our own price checks and amended the price ourselves on the website, he wasn’t particularly in agreement but it’s our house.

Also the photos that were taken weren’t great and I told him so and again he wasn’t very pleased but again, it’s our house and we’re paying so as far as we’re concerned it’s up to us.

We’ve gone with PB purely based on their price, we have a great little Estate Agents locally, but there fees are triple what PB are and we just can’t afford them.

Also, I forgot to add about the conveyancing with PB. If you use your own solicitors you pay all the fees upfront, if not you pay at the end.

Did you have other valuations done at the time?
The trouble with doing an online valuation is they can't see and judge for themselves the condition and if they aren't local they get the demand stats off Rightmove which aren't always accurate. I always do my prep work first and have an idea of the value before getting in the living room but 4/5 times my final valuation is slightly different from what I expected before seeing it for myself.

It might be worth getting a few other agents out (who offer free no obligation vals) and just see if you can get any tips from them which you can implement with your existing agent.

I wouldn't buy through an online EA. Once the sale has been agreed the EA pushes the sale through, liaises with the rest of the chain and generally trouble shoots. I shudder at the thought of that not being done.

@Bluelady I do all of the sales progression on my sales myself in the exact same way I did in the high street. I'm not saying everyone does but don't paint us all with the same brush!

Wouldn't mind an online EA but detest online Conveyancers. IMO they slow the whole process down dramatically.

Viewed two houses with online EAs this week. It is, for me, off-putting to an extent. I hate the awkwardness of viewings with the vendor, I hate that I had to register with one of them and I've now had 3 emails asking me if I want to get a valuation with them.

If I was in two minds about whether a property was worth viewing or not I could easily be swayed not to bother with it if it was an online EA

We used house network to sell our house (having previously used it to buy). I loved it as we could login and see whatever they had been doing in the day (the agent would log it on our account). Never had a problem talking to anyone on the phone if we needed to and they also had online chat and emails

They came out to do the valuation and Photos for us

Really professional, helped us get a quick sale and good prices

We had a lot of grief from every high street estate agent that showed us around houses about how we shouldn't use online agents and wouldn't get a good service but I found them to be much better. Our experience with nearly all the high street estate agents who we tried to buy with was awful (they wouldn't arrange viewings unless pushed, one occasion got us into a bidding war with another couple, wouldn't answer simple questions, one insisted on using cheques so it held up the bottom of our chain)

I definitely am biased from our positive experience but would def use online again!

Where I'm based the PB agent covers a huge area (several counties) so don't know how good their knowledge of where we are would be.
Colleague is using PB and paid for viewings but it seems a lot of the time they haven't been able to do them so she's had to instead.

It would maybe slightly put me off as a buyer as I might assume you're using the cheapest estate agency option because you're tight/skint.

As a conveyancing solicitor in real life, I would tell you that it might be the biggest case of false economy you've ever made.

Go down your local high street and find yourself a good, honest estate agent and lawyer combo. They do still exist, honest!

We're currently looking and an online EA does make me think twice as

1. I wonder if they go with an online purely to save money- and what else could they have saved money on (previous owners had a 'unique' DIY style that has caused us many headaches).
2. I've heard of so many hold ups by online EA not passing on messages

Saying that, I'd still want to view it if it was priced right

I wouldn't buy a place that was with an online estate agent. Likewise with someone who doesn't use a law firm for a conveyancing but rather uses a Ltd company that offers convenancy services.

You need someone to push the sale through. In my experience, you get what you pay for with regards to using a law firm and using an EA over an online one.

It wouldn’t put me off. Very hard to find a good honest estate agent on the high street.

All EA are in it to make money. We used a local independent one. One of the most expensive but I think it was worth it as we were offered more than we had hoped for by the second viewing. They did push he sale along although slightly mislead us on our buyer. It worked out okay though. I had 1 person who I always dealt with and who was always pushing things along.
Would definitely recommend getting a local solicitor too who knows the area and the market.
We did have problems viewing a house with an online agent. Took me ages to arrange and we were obviously ringing a call centre miles away(completely different accents) which put me off a bit.

Can't be sure of details, but on our very desirable road where houses get snapped up within the same day, I've seen all standard agents' houses go within hours, and then one on-line only agent, where the house was on the market for about 4 weeks or so.

I found this really odd, given they were presumably all on Rightmove? and that's how everyone finds them. There may have been something going on that we weren't aware of, but all neighbours were commenting on how odd it was to have it on the market for so long.

Why not do your own market research and contact the on line estate agents pretending to be a buyer? I tried this when selling last year. Tried 3 of them and found response pretty poor. So decided to go with high street estate agent who did a great job and got the house sold for asking price. All done and dusted within a couple of months. Fee was higher but to me was worth it.