To not put house sale on rightmove/Zoopla etc

[cookadoodle]

Basically I’ve told estate agent I don’t want house on rightmove as would like discreet sale. The EA is saying they will find it difficult to sell without it but said they’ll try but they don’t think they’ll find anyone.

AIBU to say that surely the whole point of an EA is to find me someone to buy my house and if that’s through their books and finding potential purchasers that could still be possible? Honestly I don’t know, perhaps I’m a bit old! I’m now thinking of turning to purple bricks or something rather than pay a huge fee for just putting it on rightmove.

I think the days of EA having databases of potential buyers are gone.

They were gone 25 years ago when we bought our house. We trawled around the EAs, gave them our details, told them we were cash buyers, no chain, and in a hurry to buy a house (deadline as we were getting married). Never heard a single thing from most of the EAs we gave our details to. 1 or 2 would send us a pile of leaflets every month or so, but they bore no resemblance to what we were looking for, i.e. too small, too large, wrong location, etc - clearly some junior was just randomly picking leaflets from the racks and posting them out. The house we eventually bought was from just driving around our preferred areas looking for new sale boards. The EA selling it was actually one we'd left our details with but we'd never had anything at all from them, yet the house was exactly what we'd asked for.

To the OP, if you're serious about selling, it really does need to go on Rightmove.

Unless you are selling a property in an extremely sought after area, then you are likely to struggle unless you list it online.

Adverts on Rightmove, Zoopla and On the Market also help reduce the number of timewasters. We moved recently and spent hours searching online looking at listings and then cross-referencing on streetview to see what the surrounding street and area was like, which way the garden faced etc., before we even picked up the phone to the agent. We looked at hundreds of houses online but only ended up viewing 10, one of which we purchased.

We've moved a few times in 30 years and we never have a board up. Genuine buyers don't find properties by driving around looking for boards, they use the internet or estate agents. Nosey parkers may see a board and just fancy a trip out. But not wanting your property on property search sites? I don't get that.

Purplebricks take your money whether they sell or not don't they?

I can understand not wanting to have pictures of your bedroom on the internet but you could work with the EA to limit the pics on rightmove?

Our old neighbour didn't want the whole village knowing that she was selling so didn't have a board. It did go on rightmove and the estate agents site, and went in a week. She did it so that she didn't get the local tyre kickers trapsing through and hoped it would be sold before the whole place knew. It worked. We all knew last minute really and then it was gone in no time.

Is it that you don’t want any electronic advertising? What about the estate agent website? Most agents don’t use paper anymore they will email potential clients links

If it is that you don’t want neighbours looking at photos of your house they will still be able to look on estate agents website.

And if you won’t use that then no one will be able to see the details

It’s a hard sell for an agent. There’s a great house but I show you any details

I get why you may want a discreet sake but sadly Estate Agents don't work luke they used to.
Unless you are a favoured client of theirs such as a property developer then most of today's EA won't be doing the ground work like they used to by printing your property. They sadly mostly rely on Rightmve and zopla and wait for buyers to get I touch via the internet.
We bought 3 years ago and found we rarely got a call from an EA saying ive got a new property that fits your criteria or we have a proprty like tge one you viewd on Saturday coming onto our books. We did from 1 local small indepent RA run buy quite an old bloke but even he used Zoopa.

We live in a hugely popular area where most houses sell within a day or two so I You are looking to buy you need to be registered with the estate agents. Very few of the houses even make it to Rightmove, and if they do, there usually already sold.

Unless your area is like this then I think you will struggle without rightmove. As others have said, it's the first place most people look, and contact the EA based on what they find in rightmove.

We sold our house at the beginning of the year and only one of the viewers was local. All the others had come from at least an hour and a half away as they were relocating. They would never have found our house or been approached to look at it if it wasn’t on rightmove. It was a more unique property at the top end of the market for the area though so that could also have made a difference, if your property is a more ‘normal’ mid range property maybe it would be easier to market without using the big online sites.

YABU unless you live in a massive country pile that some Russian oligarch is going to swoop in and buy.

Prospective buyers aren't psychic and gone are the days when people look in estate agents windows or call in to the branch to ask for print outs of property details.

The only places I look are Zoopla and rightmove.

What do you mean by discreet? Are you also refusing to have a for sale sign? So the only people who will know your house if for sale are those who go in to the estate agents?

If you had a £20 million house in London or LA, it’s possible to pursue a private sale offmarket. Some wealthy buyers prefer privacy from their side too.

However, if it’s a 30s semi in Wolverhampton, for example, you’d be bananas to cut yourself off from your market. The only result will be fewer offers and potentially a lower sale price.

The only way this will work is if you live in an area which is very desirable....we sold our house without even using an estate agent but we told lots of people we were looking to move.

When we were looking I checked Rightmove religiously and barely spoke to an estate agent despite me asking them to tell me about properties about to come on the market. Seems bizarre that you don't want to use the biggest marketing tool available. How do you think purple bricks sell houses????

Don't use Purple Bricks - they have a dreadful reputation. But why not online as well as an estate agent's window? You'll find that houses sell better when they are well advertised.

We sold incredibly quickly (and painlessly) because our buyer was keen to buy in our area and had got alerts set up on rightmove. Agent didn't do much for his substantial bill!!!

I have to admit it seems quite 'exposing' to me when people have photos on rightmove showing their books/pictures, baby's/teenager's bedroom etc. Given that neighbours/acquaintances/other vendors do look, out of interest!

But as another pp has said, you could get round that by not having many photos - though even then you probably won't get as many people interested as if you do a full set of photos.

A few people sell without going on rightmove round here, so estate agents presumably do have a 'list' of potential purchasers. It would worry me to do so though - how do you know you've got the best price possible?

Estate agents don't have databases of people looking for properties any more. Not going on Rightmove or Zoopla will mean your property will take longer to sell but if you're ok with that then that's up to you. I didn't have a board outside my house when I sold because I didn't want the neighbours to know but that's as discreet as I got.

When I was looking to buy in my local area, the only calls I got from agents were asking had I considered .... which I had seen on Rightmove but they obviously couldn’t sell.

It's possible but as they said probably a lot harder.

We found our home online, we genuinely did not have time to be going into multiple estate agents together to look.

I can understand this. I wouldn't be necessarily want pictures and a floorplan of my (distinctive in the locality) home out there on the internet for all and sundry to see.
However, as pp has said, you're then denying the estate agent his/her primary marketing tool, so perhaps you just have to grit your teeth and bear it, keeping in mind that the end goal is that it won't be your home anymore.

Yes you can do it... But you'll be automatically cutting out vast numbers of potential purchasers....

YABU, times have changed.

The statistics that I'm aware of are 85% of houses sold in the U.K. are currently found via Rightmove

You could just have a picture of the front of your home if you didn’t want lots of interior photos taken but again you would be reducing your market.

It depends on whether discretion is more important than speed/price.

You can ask for no for sale board.

You can only have external photos + floorplan.

However if you actually want to sell your house websites are the modern way of marketing houses. Without marketing a house how will anyone know it's for sale?

Actually EAs do still have databases and it's not impossible you would get a sale from them doing ring rounds but I'd expect them to charge a higher % for basically asking them to do their job with 1 hand tied behind their back.

It won't be as quick, it won't be viewed by as many people and therefore you may be limiting yourself to getting a lower price. But yes it's possible.