Would you use an Estate Agent to sell your home who doesn't advertise on Rightmove?

[RavenHouse]

Would love your opinion. Is this a good idea?
I've been an estate agent for a long time, have worked for a number of companies and most recently for myself.
Rightmove have of course cornered the market and agents pay monthly fees to them now, in the thousands to have the privilege of advertising on their site.
Would you use an agent who cut their customers fees down by thousands but didn't advertise on Rightmove/Zoopla etc? and instead used social media and word of mouth?
This would be in a village setting, it wouldn't work for cities. Only a local agent within a small area.
There would still be a sale board at the property and the process would be exactly the same. It would just mean it would cost the customer much less in fees, a small flat fee instead of a costly percentage.
I'd be interested to get your thoughts?

Even the castles and stately homes often go up on Rightmove too.

If only 0.0001% of people could possibly be able and willing to buy it, that's even more reason to advertise it far and wide, to find that exclusively tiny number of people - rather than a standard 3-bed semi that thousands of people could be in the market for.

Nope.

I assume that any agent not advertising on Rightmove isn't really operating at the sort of level I want in order to get a sale.

I also avoid significantly cheaper agents for the same reason. I wouldn't touch Purple Bricks etc with a barge pole either.

Selling a house is a major operation these days because of the money involved. I'm an extremely long way from the top end of housing, I live in a 3 bed semi and last sold a 2 bed terrace, but both are worth stupid numbers. I'm not trusting that process to some fly-by-night. Last time i got 3 quotes from established agents who used decent photographers, and went with the one I felt most able to work with and who knew how to market. Asking price offer within ten days and completed sale within 3 months. Looking at some of the photos I've seen on 'why won't my house sell' threads, I don't regret a penny of the fees I paid the agent.

My parents sold without Rightmove or Zoopla listings recently.

They used an estate agent with a huge social media presence locally and got a good price quickly.

By going with him they did limit their market to local people who follow him on social media or to people who passed by the house and saw the board. So people not in the local area might not have seen the house. But equally if you're thinking of living in a particular area surely you'd check out the local estate agent scene as part of your research?

I think it would work best in a village setting like you say op, with maybe slightly different or more expensive properties. Not so much in a large town or city where there could be 5 similar flats or terraced houses within a couple of streets for sale. In that case people will want to compare them quickly and easily on RM rather than trawling lots of individual agents sites.

And also, would you really be that much cheaper? How much money are we actually talking as a % of the sale?

It wasn't the price that made my parents choose their estate agent, it was his marketing tools and local reputation.

Are your sales figures the same or better than other agents who do use Rightmove? There are absolutely agents who specialise in sort of off-market sales. Generally, when we were looking, we only looked on Rightmove and some specialist agricultural property sites. Having seen neighbours struggle to sell their property (only just SSTC after more than a year) and it was on Rightmove, I can’t imagine even less market reach would have been helpful. I never once looked at an estate agent’s social media. But it depends on the type of properties and the types of sales, I suppose.

Also when we were looking for our house, we had a huge area we were looking in, I’d say a radius of 50+ miles. Basically an entire county, plus some areas just on the border in neighbouring counties. No way I would have been looking at individual estate agent social media or websites. There would have easily been like 100 of them.

And how would I even know what they were called or what to search for. I certainly didn’t want to have to sift through 40 social media posts to find the one 5 bedroom with at least 5 acres and outbuildings ripe for conversion that I was looking for. It was hard enough finding that on Rightmove.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply. All very helpful! Sometimes you have these ideas and you don't ask, you'll never know!
What prompted the question is selling a few recently which never made it to Rightmove. I'd go out to value and already have them a buyer, someone who missed out on a very similar property recently. The sale got agreed without the need to publish online so it just got me thinking of alternatives. Really appreciate the feedback

It's not just the convenience of Rightmove, but also the accessibility and the ease of viewing without any commitment.

In the old days, people would have to go to the EA (during their opening hours) and ask somebody for the printed particulars of any houses they were interested in.

Then, you would get all the questions about your own circumstances: are you ready to proceed; do you want us to market your house for you as well; let me add you to our mailing list; give me your number and we'll call you with every single any new houses on our books that may interest you; let me arrange an appointment for you to speak to our no-obligation mortgage adviser to see how much you could afford...........

It's the equivalent of people who own and run very small shops and who stand in the doorway, so you have to get them to move (and observe you) before you know if they actually have what you're looking for, how deserted and deathly quiet their shop is or how high their prices are. You end up feeling very committed and awkward, in a way that you never do with a standard supermarket.

Yes, with Rightmove, it means that you get a great deal of traffic from nosey people and those just wanting to fantasise about living in your ancient castle (so I've heard.....!) - but you also make it easier for casual viewers to see, and some of those may just stop to consider their realistic options and turn into serious potential buyers.

I agree re seeing a sign and then checking. A lovely house near our school recently had a For Sale sign and out of nosiness I went on to RM to look at it. It wasn't there and I had no memory of the agent's name so couldn't find it online at all. Admittedly my level of commitment to the search was lower than that of a buyer but if I HAD wanted to find it, I'd have had to go back to the house to look at the sign and been quite irritated immediately that the seller was forcing me to do that!

I think that if you believe someone in the village may be interested in buying it then go ahead with your local agent. If the agent is good they will have lots of contacts and know who is looking to move.

No. Partly because it would limit potential buyers, but also because I probably wouldn't know the estate agent existed. We're selling at the moment and before putting it on the market we had a few agents round to get a valuation etc, and we picked those agents by looking at our area on Rightmove - what houses looked overpriced, what didn't have good pictures, was there a trend of X agent always having those houses we didn't think looked good or were overpriced? Were there agents where the pictures were good, the prices reasonable, the info good etc.

I'm so confused, are you phoning rightmove? you're supposed to phone the agent who published the ad..

I only look on RM so I wouldn’t choose an EA who didn’t use it because I’d be concerned that people like me wouldn’t know the house was for sale.

I'm looking to move and currently can't deal with RM. I'm not getting anywhere - I ring the number, nobody answers. Or they take details and nobody returns the calls. On the other hand, I ring the agent directly and get the answers/viewings.

What do you mean? The number on the Rightmove ad is the estate agent isn't it? That's what's happened whenever I've called the number - it goes to the estate agent office.

But equally if you're thinking of living in a particular area surely you'd check out the local estate agent scene as part of your research?

Actually, no, I wouldn’t and last time I moved, I didn’t. I was looking for a fairly standard two bed flat in a particular area. I viewed 8-10 off Rightmove and bought the one I liked the best. There was a large choice available, why would I waste my time looking anywhere else?

If I ever win the lottery and I’m looking for the perfect multi million pound house that ticks every box, I may take longer / but until then, Rightmove suits me fine. Most ‘perfect’ houses / flats in my price bracket have something annoying that only comes to light after purchase, anyway.

Maybe I'm unusual, but as a seller using you as an agent, I would be very hesitant for you to say that you already have a buyer, so no need to put it on RM.

I would be concerned that you might just be looking to flip my house and get your commission quickly, rather than working for me and trying to get me the best possible offer by advertising it on the open market.

After all, as PP said, it isn't difficult at all to sell a house if you happily accept a ridiculously low knock-down bargain price - the professional skill is in finding the right buyer and achieving the right price.

I think it depends on local area. When I lived in Edinburgh it was espc and could be hit miss as to which properties made it onto rightmove.

Yeah, I'm confused too. Rightmove is just an advertising platform and not an agent or middleman.

Like in the old days, you wouldn't look for a plumber in the Yellow Pages and then phone the YP publishers to get your chosen one to come out and fix your toilet!

That's interesting, most sellers, from experience would love to sell like this. A buyer who has already been vetted, is known to the agent and ready to proceed. It saves the seller having to prepare the house every time for a viewing and rules out potential time wasters. It then puts the seller in a position to view their chosen houses straight away and overall makes for a much more straight forward, positive experience.

Fair enough if that works best for them; but surely it isn't surprising that some sellers would want to feel confident that they got the best possible (realistic) price and weren't unintentionally selling themselves short by tens of thousands?

Definitely not

Who is buying the village homes?

Outsiders- you need rightmove because those customers won't know to look for your business.

Locals - they'll see your sign and you probably have a fairly captive audience so probably fine.

If you sell a property before it’s listed, as a buyer I’d be eternally grateful you didn’t then list it on Rightmove because it would stop gazumping. Which honestly I feel like good EA’s manage.

Also, as the seller, I’d rather that property wasn’t listed on Rightmove because if that buyer then dropped out I’d want the benefit of ‘launching’ the property so to speak.

So I think the answer is keep listing on Rightmove, but exercise discretion when you secure sales before they’re listed. But also this is a huge benefit that you’re able to secure quick sales - don’t discount the value of that. I’d actually pay a premium to an agent who could sell my property faster so I think this is huge value add. Don’t undervalue your work.

I'm so confused by this and desperate for an explanation. If you are on a property on Rightmove, you can click to call for more information, but it just directs you to the agent - so if they aren't responding well, that's the estate agent, nothing to do with Rightmove.

Or if you are calling up Rightmove - why are you doing that? And why aren't they explaining your mistake? None of that makes sense.

No, I always check Rightmove first, I never actually go into an estate agents or look in their window, I just look at Rightmove. I've sold a house and an apartment recently and I definitely don't think the apartment would have sold so quickly, within 2 weeks of going on the market, if it hadn't been on Rightmove.

I too have many questions on this!