Estate agents' fees

[vivat]

Hi, I'm about to put my house on the market and wondered what sort of fees and lock in periods other people have managed to negotiate at the moment. Am aiming for 1% and 1 week - is this too optimistic ?

Thanks

Vivat - it is worth trying to sell it yourself in your local paper if poss - I did this and saved nearly 2 grand! 1% does sound about right for agency fees though

Just note this: the estate agents fees have VAT slapped on them so bear that in mnd when calculating how much you are prepared to pay or how much money you will have left over. We have just sold our house (took 6 months for an offer BTW) and did not realise we had to pay VAT on top of what we calculated for the estate agent until we received the solicitor's bill.

1% sounds low to me. Most will start around 2-2.5% for sole agency, and more for joint.

You should be able to get them down from this though, but I'd be surprised if most would go lower than 1.5%.

Most will have a ridiculous lock in period. When I got the contract from the ones I was using I just crossed out the terms that I didn't like, signed it and sent it back (which is perfectly legal and above board). They never commented - I'd be surprised if they even noticed, but then they were an imcompetent bunch of jackasses!!

I think best you will get is 1.5% and a sole agency lock in of 8 weeks. But ask for 1% then you have something to negotiate on. Also depends on sale price. 1.5% of a sale price of £400,000 is more tempting than 1.5% of a property on at £150,000.

Where are you vivat?

We seem to pay more in Scotland than in England - and have to pay for advertising in the localpaper!

We paid 1%. That is fairly normal at the moment because the market is so sluggish.

In my area (Worcestershire) 1% is very unrealistic. We've just gone on the market (today in fact) and the commission is 1.5%, the highest we were quoted was 1.85% (gulp!). The standard tie in period here is 12 weeks with 25 days written notice at the end of that period.

I think if they have a lock in period at all then it would be at least 4-6 weeks, especially with houses moving quite slowly at the moment. As LasVagas says the percentage you can negotiate will depend on the price of your house, but also on how much work you expect them to do, for instance will you do the viewings yourself? I also suspect that they won't go below a certain percentage if they suspect that you're going to be demanding or a PITA when it comes to negotiating terms and final price with a buyer.

28 days notice, not 25, sorry

Thanks - i'm in London and price will (hopefully) be about 400k. The competition seems so intense round here with several agents' flyers landing on my doorstep per day, that i'm hoping to beat them down.

Good luck!

But be careful that if you beat them down, they still make as great an effort to sell your house! It can be a balancing act between reducing their commission and still getting your details in full colour on the front of the local property rag.

I negotiated ours down tp 1.25% in london area, but they failed to sell it.
Had 13 week contract with 14 days notice.