To ask if it’s cheeky to ask an estate agent...

[Notmyusual80]

...to lower their fee to .5%?

Thinking of putting house on the market and I reckon it’s worth maybe 450/500k. Last time I moved, I got the EA down to 1% commission and I’m all for negotiating again this time around so I’m just wondering what’s the lowest I could reasonably aim for? Will they laugh in my face if I suggest .5%??

Check out local alternatives
See where 5% fits
And then negotiate, showing him what local alternatives charge

You get what you pay for. Just bear in mind you won't get a good RE out of bed here in our area of the US for less than 5% on a $1m home. 1% charged in the UK is a very very good deal. Think about how much you are really saving and the type/value of property you are selling.

Where I live (overseas) you cant get estate agents to lower their fee below 4%. And for that they do next to bugger all!

1% I would be delighted with. And its not normal to have self selling sites here either. Nightmare !

Good luck with the house sale.

I've twice negotiated a sliding scale, with one rate for achieving asking, and a higher rate for achieving over asking.

In a tricky market using the cheapest EA may not provide the best value.

Sell for £475k, charged at 0.5%.

Maybe a better EA can get you £480k, but will charge 1%.

NorthernSpirit you might want to check your... Oh never mind.

House network seemed good from a buyer's perspective and is much cheaper. Make sure your price is right (see actual sale prices on land registry) and wait to see how it does online before you pay out for an offline agent.

Last house we sold was abroad and the fee at all the agents was 6%. They did everything. Our agent was an old work collegue for me and she lived round the corner. She lowered it to 5% for us, we were very happy, sold in a day.
Where we are we've been told it's 1% which sounds wonderful in comparison, so long as they do a good job.

So general consensus seems to be go for it! And to those who asked, yes, I’d definitely do my own viewings. Thanks all!

Yes worth a try. We got ours down to 0.75 they wouldn't go any lower.
Of the 4 we contacted 2 were happy to go to 1%, one wanted 1.25% and we went with the one who accepted 0.75! However, they've been shite.

We got two offers fairly quickly for asking price, £435k but neither sale ever developed into more than talk. Took house off market last month due to it being really stressful - will try again with diff agents later in the year.

Sometimes it's easier to state an amount rather than a %. Of course, if you accept a lower offer then that amount as a % goes up, but it's a decent way of negotiating.

Ours offered 1% straight off (including all photos, viewings etc) and we happily accepted. They did a great job and were well worth it - in fact they paid for themselves by getting our buyers to bid upwards and offer more when we would actually have accepted a lower amount.

Might be a false economy to try to make them work for less. It might not be worth their while to negotiate the price up so much.

Mind you, the market is dead right now anyway.

Northern Spirit is correct in the sense that that figure is what the individual agent selling the property will take home (at the firm I used to work at anyway - 10% of the commission).

We sold last year and had a sliding scale.

1.25% + VAT if sold above X amount
1% + VAT if sold at X amount - X amount
1% including VAT if sold at X amount or below.