To think estate agents aren’t worth the money?

[Thatescalatedquickly2]

We are looking to buy a bigger place. Selling our flat in. London to buy a family home.

I’m told estate agents charge 1-2 percent commission on a sale. Our place is worth about 650k, so that’s going to be hugely expensive for taking a few pics and sticking it on rightmove.

I’ve also been viewing some places and I can’t say I’ve ever met an estate agent who adds value. When we were looking for our flat, they often hardly knew about the property, no idea about the area and didn’t really ‘sell’ a place to us.

aibu for thinking we should just go for cheapest option?

This is a very good point. Even if you have no other reason than you want to try to save yourself some money, the fact that you've not used an EA may deter a lot of people, and make them think that you've either got something to hide or might otherwise be an absolute clueless mess in the whole process.

They don't know that you aren't a nightmare seller; and you don't know that they aren't a nightmare buyer.

Yes, this entirely. You can't have it both ways and declare that EA's 'only take a few photos and upload them to Rightmove' - but then freely acknowledge that you need them to do all of the countless much more boring, more difficult, more specialist, more time-consuming tasks as well.

You might as well say that being an author is a ridiculously simple non-job, because "How difficult is it to load a ream of paper into your printer and press 'Print'?"

But the work they do has not increased with house prices. House values have rocketed far beyond cost of living. houses used to cost on average 1.5 times the average salary. Now it’s more like 8 times . Their income is 5x what it used to be ( even adjusted for inflation)

that means we are vastly overpaying.

it might be hassle, but probably amounts to a few days work work in total?

We recently sold my in laws house. Estate agent was rubbish. Left windows open when showing people round, terrible communication.

We instigated most conversations with them, including asking them to reduce the price as we considered it over priced, hence the lack of viewers … they agreed but hadn’t suggested it.

I had to rewrite the spiel on the website as they hadn’t mentioned the beautiful stream at the end of the garden, also no photo of it. Didn’t mention the outstanding schools in the area. All the photos were terrible.

Parting with the best part of £12K was gutting.

I have a male friend who runs a small EA business. Righmove costs over £3K a month for their small business. Zoopla is over £600. Then they have to have expensive PI Insurance. They have to have various professional subscriptions. They have to pay an AML fee to HMRC. Employees have to have regular AML training. Employees have to be paid regardless, both wages and mileage. The agents have their own motor costs to do valuations and viewings etc.

The agent only gets the 1% commission if the house sells, so if it gets taken off the market, or the vendor switches agents, they get nothing for all their hard work. They have to visit and give an initial value, then visit again to take measurements and photos to put on Rightmove.

They do all the viewings, they negotiate the price when people offer below price. Some buyers/vendors can get very stressed during the process so they have to keep everyone calm and reasonable. I have seen my friend work so hard to keep a chain together when one of them gets wobbly, or loses their sale.1% commission is actually a very low amount to pay for somebody to take care of all of that for you.

It also takes you out of the equation, it removes a lot of the emotion from it. My friend prefers people not to be home when viewings are done, because buyers don't look around with the same freedom if somebody is there. The buyer doesn't feel they can comment honestly about the garden being too small, or "that paper will have to go" etc. The buyer needs to be able to envisage themselves living there.

You need to ask around for recommendations, ask friends and family in the area who they used. There are good agents out there as well as bad.

If AI takes jobs then hopefully estate agents are one of the sectors to be impacted. Solicitors too. Both are experts at time wasting and box ticking for a big fee for the privilege.

I have always gone at least partly by the blurbs. If they’re littered with SPAG mistakes, then to me that indicates a sloppy, unprofessional attitude.

Also, as I was reminded by someone’s post the other day, EAs who don’t include the ( to me essential) room sizes on floor plans are to be avoided.

OTOH there was one who I thought very efficient and professional - until I found out that he was seriously dodgy, and a liar to boot - illicit deals going on.

That's a very fair point. I suppose the argument goes that they are rewarded for getting you as high a price as possible - and incentivised not to just urge you to take an initial low-ball offer, as they don't get any less money for it; but it's true that a very large amount of that higher price they can achieve is down to the rocketing housing market rather than their own efforts.

Then again, the EA staff (and the company itself) will have their own ever-increasing bills to pay, like everybody else, so I guess you could say that they need to maintain income parity and not get left behind.

I don't actually know how many working days equivalent it takes them, as a lot of it will come in dribs and drabs; but surely things like viewings - including travel to and from the property - must add up quite a lot?

Having recently sold in North London, using a local independent, I agree a good one is worth the money - sorted the photos and brochure, put it in their window display, did many viewings and post viewing visits, sorted out and let in multiple people for surveys, EPC, etc, due diligence on purchasers finance (no idea how you could even do that yourself) , liaised between my conveyancer and the other side for months, kept the purchaser calm when everything was taking forever.
Get recommendations in your area, there are plenty of reviews online, DM me if you are North London. I paid 1% plus VAT

Oh and there was no floor plan on ours! Basic shit really!

@myfriendsellshousesI appreciate the costs you’ve mentioned. However, in our case, the agent’s outgoings have been comparatively minimal. They arranged a total of 8 viewings, including one repeat visit, prepared a brochure which we had to correct multiple times and was still not right. Our house didn’t go on their website, didn’t go on Rightmove, wasn’t in their window, and we had no for sale board.

For two of the viewings, we were standing at the door waiting for the agent to arrive so that we could go out as they requested, but she was so late the potential buyers arrived first and I ended up showing them round part of the house until the agent arrived. Each time we went out we asked her to either ring or text when she was leaving so that we could go home, but she didn’t do so once, so we wasted ages waiting in the car down the road. It now turns out that some of the information the agency gave us about the chain beneath us wasn’t accurate, and everything is taking longer than we had been led to believe would be the case. Almost all of the staff in the office left at Christmas with the exception of the inept woman who was late for viewings, who is very hard to contact. The admin woman is beyond incompetent and has made so many errors with the sale so far. It really hurts to be paying £22,000 for what they’ve done under the circumstances and should the sale fall through, they won’t get another chance to sell the house.

There are good and bad agents for sure. But I don’t want to deal with viewers and the eventual buyers, i don’t want to negotiate and I don’t want to have to chivvy the chain along.
I also do my research and am amazed when I’m shown around by someone who basically just has the keys and knows nothing (this is a big reason why I hate online agents). But there are some good agents who know the market, not just their own properties but what their competitors have and prices achieved. A few questions before engaging them will show you who is on the ball or not.

If I knew I was getting someone like your friend, I’d probably be able to justify the cost. But I think that it’s such a mixed bag performance wise, you pay $$$ regardless of whether they are good, bad or amazing.

i think what also stings is that in London our 650k flat is the bottom end of the market, so less incentive to sell over a 1.3m family home. It’s also going to be the least experienced staff dealing with the sale.

in other parts of the country, that’s a hefty sale and you’d get the owner or senior manager trying to get it over the line.

but this thread is very instructive. And it’s good to know there are good ones out there!