Estate agent want to charge £30k

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

I get that estate agents are on commission to incentivise them to get the best price but surely there's a better way?

We live in London and are very lucky to have a lovely home. estate agents want 1.5% + VAT commission which would be £30,000 if we get the asking price.

But they don't do any more work for the £30k from me Vs the £7.5k they'd get selling a small flat. Do they? With Rightmove etc the benefit of the flashy high street office must be negligible.

IABU - there's more to it and the service and experience justifies the cost
YANBU - just use an online seller and pay £1,500 there's no way a local office can add £28.5k of value.

We are just about to sell DPs zone 2 London property, asking price £900k, valued by 3 agents. We are going to try first through on-line agent Strike as cannot see what the local high street ones do more for the commission. They will do the photos, video etc and won't post until we are happy with those and the advert copy.
The property will go on Rightmove, onthemarket and the others for £500. We can do the viewings ourselves and obv can answer more questions than an EA can re neighbours, local neighbourhood, bills, so can't see why we should have to pay 1000s to sell through a local agent. I really don't think they do very much for their exorbitant fees.

@FTEngineerM

Certainly it just a shop front imo, negotiating/liaising/squeezing max value out of people who have made offers.

They had ours sold in 3 days 98% of asking which I already thought was far fetched. It really will be worth the 1%.

Most of the online sellers claim to achieve 97% of the asking price.

We're the seller, we wouldn't accept 10% under asking and if those were the offers we'd cut our losses and go with the local agent

Also, we sold a one bed flat in SE London in October. It sold for 3k over the asking price with Yopa within a week (four offers so went to a full and final) so I have no reservations about using an online agency for a much less fee than traditional agents.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

Thanks *@FlimFlamJimJams* it's good to know they are a realistic option. Think we might test the water with them

Purple bricks were absolutely useless for us. Think long and hard before engaging them to sell. Along with the catalogue of disasters involving the for sale board, the photos, the description, the lack of communication, the over valuing, online search issues which they never resolved, lack of screening viewers, being impossible to get hold of etc ad infinitum, they did absolutely none of the negotiating, and nothing at all once the sale was agreed.

Never heard from them again. Well, not until I posted a scathing review which they forced Trust Pilot to take down until I'd provided evidence that we'd used them. No doubt the same happens to other people, but most reviewers probably don't want to go to the effort of digging out all the paperwork, so they never get reinstated for people to see on review sites.

Whatever your do, think it through carefully, and in particular hiw involved you want to be/have time to be involved in the selling process.

You need to asses your market and your agent. Are you in an area of high demand, where it's fairly clear what the price should be (becauce others have sold close by for similar), are there other houses on or likely to come on the market which will compete with yours ? is your house fairly standard within its bracket (ie no features you want to talk up or down)? Do you have the time to keep chasing up issues, do the viewings (on top of the keeping the house immaculate)?

If yes, I might give Purple Bricks a try.

I say might, because actually I wouldn't. We are in London and in your price range, and I have found in selling that the right EA will add real value. They can talk credibly about the market, area etc and remember - they only have to add 2%to any offer you eventually get, to make you quids in against a fixed fee / internet providers.

We charge fees on a percentage basis but on a sliding scale. Are you sure they will be charging the same %fee for a lower value property?

Honestly, I think it was our proactive agents that made the difference for us the last time we sold. They phoned us every day or every couple of days to run through a list of what they'd been doing like contacting people already on their books, and filtering viewings from the start. We ended up with loads of viewings, and the choice of a handful of sealed bids in on closing day (Scottish system, bit weird I know).
We bought via Purple Bricks, and I wouldn't work with them again. We never actually spoke to the "agent" on the phone - it was all text messaging. He didn't know anything we asked him about the house (luckily the vendor herself was lovely and happy to message us), didn't seem to know anything about the area, and made a very half-hearted effort to negotiate on our under-fixed-price offer - when they're on a flat fee they don't have an incentive to care about the final price.

@Intheopinionofourexpert thank you. I've been wondering if the trust pilot reviews were too good to be true

Suspect down South somewhere. Over the top commission (?) on an over the top price. Bet you didn't complain when they told you what to market it for?

If I was paying 3m for a house I would not want to deal with an online estate agent.

I used purple bricks for my £600k home sale and was very happy with them. But I think at the price you're asking snobbery might hinder your sale

We had this dilemma last year and chose to use an online estate agent. We went in with the plan that if it didn't sell within x number of months we'd go the traditional route.
I'm quite good at photography so took the pictures myself - I knew the optimal angles and did it when the lighting was good.
DH showed prospective buyers round.
We sold in about 2.5 months and the sale went through with no issues. The thing I liked was that we were in direct communication with the buyers so there was no underhand tactics from an EA.

Daughter had a few EA's, she opted for one but sent a email saying that she'd go with them, if they'd lowered it from 1.5% to 1%, they agreed.

Purplebricks every time

I’m in London and we used nested. V g. Can’t remember the fee but it was better than high street.

Honestly I have never understood the fees estate agents charge. The bring barely anything of value to the transaction and yet charge the most out of the professionals involved. Once you have a buyer all they do is pester the people who do the actual hard work and then charge a fortune for it. Half of them don't have any clue about the conveyancing process either and just rattle up the chain with misinformation pointlessly.

No way would I pay an estate agent £30,000. They barely do anything. It's not even worth the fees they charge on a much lower value sale nevermind 30k.

Purplebricks were awful when we got them to quote. Valued at 35% under the next nearest valuation and didn't know the market where we were at all. We sold 2 days after going on the market with a traditional agent, 40% above what the purplebricks numpty valued.

@Wisper1

Suspect down South somewhere. Over the top commission (?) on an over the top price. Bet you didn't complain when they told you what to market it for?

Eh?

Yes it's London prices. £1.65m is the estimate of what someone will pay for it. But that's nothing to do with the agent, it's the shortage of housing in London compared to demand. Not sure what your point is? Sounds like you think I'm being ungrateful in some way, but can't think why?

You really will get what you pay for when selling a £3m properly. I'm not sure I would look for a property in that price range with them. Theres a vast difference between PB and Strutt Parker ime.

Last time we sold (admittedly a number of years ago), a new branch of Foxtons had opened up locally and were doing an opening offer of 0% if they sold the house within 6 months. I guess they needed stock on their books as a new agent. I doubted it would actually work like that in practice. i.e. they'd try and shift it in 6 months plus 1 day etc but it was a genuine offer, they did sell it in 6 months and we paid zero commission - did a great job too. Maybe see if you have any new agents locally who would do a similar deal?

Jesus I’ve almost sold my parents house and all the estate agents I spoke to did fixed prices
Nowhere near your price of house but they did all the viewings took the buyer back so far 4 times as they wanted to check stuff and I can’t fault them so far
Got the house sold within a week and we had loads of offers and got 20k over the asking
price

They charged me a fix rate of 2000 and the house sold for 415k

It's not so much conducting viewings but managing the chain and seeing the sale through to completion where good estate agents earn their commission. In my experience, most conveyancing solicitors are next to useless and do the bare minimum until the last minute, I've known many sales almost fall through due to their incompetence. You need to have an agent working for you who's going to be constantly chasing the chain. I would always go with a local recommendation and negotiate the fee if you can.

I had a very good experience with our estate agent for our last house - our first buyer had to pull out when we were already quite a way through the process.
Our estate agents were the ones that spotted that our buyer was suddenly not responding to emails. They asked them straight out - what's happening? They got our house back on the market again, rang up all the people who had shown interest and we had sold again for the same price within 24 hours.

I think online estate agents would be a good option for easy sales - flats / houses for 1st time buyers or cash buyers.

Sounds like your house will have a limited number of buyers so getting a good estate agent who knows the local market and the real buyers, not time wasters

I used high street EA to sell but viewed several houses marketed by Purplebricks. And failed to view several others which were cancelled at short notice, no explanation, after a 200 mile drive.

There's 18 estate agents near me, in hugely expensive rental offices. It's money for old rope.

But the point downthread is well made that they only need to be 2% better and n price to earn their fee.

We’re looking to buy a property in that ballpark range. I won’t look at any properties listed with online agents. At that price point you need the sales progression service that good traditional agents offer. We paid similar commission in London selling our house & it was worth it.

I definitely have no interest in dealing with a vendor directly which the online agents need you to do. Most people are reasonable but a not insignificant fraction become quite irrational when dealing with the stress of the sale of a house & chains.