Anyone sold their home without using an estate agent?

[lahdeedah]

I'm interested to know if anyone here has successfully sold their home without having to pay commission to an estate agent.

We had our flat on the market with a local agent last autumn - it's a long story but basically the agent was rubbish and did very little to market the flat. Miraculously a buyer appeared just as our contract was about to expire - but he turned out to be unreliable and pulled out of the deal after a few weeks. It was sort of a relief, as I would have felt so bitter about paying the agent a penny of commission if the deal had gone through!

We are just starting to think about putting the flat back on the market again, and are seriously considering going it alone this time. Has anyone marketed their property themselves? Would you recommend it? or would we be better off just finding ourselves another estate agent?

TIA

I would say only do it if you are selling in a HOT market where demand outstrips supply. Getting your property seen by potential buyers is MUCH more difficult without an agent, but it is possible. In a quiet market you need all the help you can get, IME.

NdP is probably right. We sold in a pretty hot market using Propertybroker and the whole thing was tremendous. We used them alongside an estate agent. Perhaps you can't do that anymore, this was 2001. Anyway, the estate agent humoured us, feeling pretty sure he would get the sale. Then after two or three weeks we had an offer which went through. Result! Were extra lucky as the buyer was the nicest man in the world which was very useful in negotiating bits and pieces once the survey came back. HTH.

You can still do that Toots, but you will prob have to pay 'multi-agent' fees if the estate agent you are also using sells your property first. This can add at least another 1% to your agent's fees.

Thanks NdP and Toots. We live in a semi-suburban part of East London - the agents give the impression that there are hundreds of buyers looking for 2-bed flats around here (especially with the Olympics coming our way), but we had very little interest in September/October.

We are hoping that the Spring market will be better for us. Also we have decided to drop our asking price, so hopefully we'll attract more first-time buyers.

Still, I don't think it's what I would call a "hot" market, so maybe we will just have to bite the bullet and go with an agent...

There are private home sale websites which will give you webspace without the astronomical prices of an EA

\link{http://www.houseladder.co.uk/sellhouse.aspx?OVRAW=property%20ladder&OVKEY=property%20ladder&OVMTC=standard\www.houseladder.co.uk}

We sold ours last year without an estate agent. We tried for 3 months with one and were taking it off the market when ...

It was through word of mouth and someone I knew was talking to a lady from her street who wanted to buy a 4 bed house ..... . My friend got her phone number, I phoned her, she came and looked. Later in the day she brought her builder around and that evening we agreed a price....

Result - SOLD

Note - we didn't have the agents sign up while we were selling wiht them so the solicitor was happy that we owed the EA nothing!

Once price agreed it is much simpler to sort out any problems directly rather than an EA trying to sort it out!

Would certainly buy and sell a house privately again

Good luck anyway LDD. Spring is loads better than Sept/Oct for most things isn't it? Especially daffodils

Thanks all - that's a great story Cece, glad it all worked out so well for you. I find it's a bit like Chinese Whispers when you're communicating with a buyer through an estate agent, there are all sorts of misunderstandings and everything takes twice as long as it should. It must be so much more straightforward without.

I am feeling all optimistic and full of the joys of Spring, so maybe we will try one of these private sale websites for a few weeks and see what response we get. We can always then sign up with an agent if we're not getting anywhere.

by the way if you know anyone interested in buying a 2-bed flat in Leytonstone, let me know!!

have you tried

www.thelittlehousecompany.co.uk

Hi,

We had our property on the market for 18nths without any luck. It was on a couple of websites for selling without agent....never got one genuine enquiry.....all scammers.
Tanya

We sold our flat years ago without using an agent.I put a notice in our local paper and within about 2 weeks,we had a buyer.Did get lots of time wasters ringing though,which was a pain,but we were very happy to only have to pay about £25 for the ad.