Selling a house privately (not through an estate agent)

[MyDadIsTheGreatest]

My brother and I are about to inherit my dad's house, which we want to sell. We are both executors of the will, and that side of things will be straightforward.

One of my dad's neighbours has expressed an interest in buying it. If we want to sell privately to him rather than going through the usual estate agent process, what do we need to do?

We will need to get probate and probably pay IHT and we have a relative who is a solicitor who will help us with that. I'm not sure whether he does conveyancing though.

Pretty straightforward. We did it with my parents in law house. Had a queue of people wanting to buy! Sold it to next door neighbour in the end. Instruct solicitor, get one experienced in conveyancing though. Only thing you really need to do is keep and eye on and agree timescales.

We sold direct to a neighbour without estate agents. We had neighbours offer first but gave estate agents a few months to see if they could beat it. Then our solicitor dealt with their solicitor. Painless and saves ££££s

My daughter is in the process of selling her flat privately (to the people whose house she and her boyfriend are buying)!

I also bought somewhere privately once and it wasn’t a problem at all.

The only issue is to decide how much to sell it for. An estate agent’s view can be helpful in that regard, but you might need to have a valuation anyway for IHT purposes.

The solicitor/conveyancer will do all the important stuff. Once you’ve agreed a price with the buyer just let them know and they will get on with preparing the contract.

We have bought and sold without estate agent involvement a couple of times. It is easy enough and just cuts out a middle man.

Agree the price with the neighbour and then both sides instruct appropriate solicitors. That's really all you have to do.

It might be best to get two or three agents round to value the property first though, so that you know what a reasonable price/offer would be before agreeing with the neighbour. You are under no obligation to use said agents.

If you need to pay iht or are close you either need valuation from 3 estate agents or a surveyors valuation.

Dh did this for his mum's house when she died. Neighbour showed interest. They had an estate agent value it, with a view to listing it.. neighbour offered 10% lower taking into account the state of the place. Dh accepted after considering speed of sale, and speed of deterioration of the damp house.
He employed a local conveyancing solicitor who was experienced in probate cases and they just dealt with it all, painlessly.

Thanks, everyone. Sounds like it ought to be fairly straightforward if we do decide to go down that route.