Do we need an Estate Agent or can we do it ourselves?

[donna123]

We need to sell DH's deceased grandmother's house. Empty house, no chain, no time or financial pressure to sell.
Estate agents seem to cost a lot of money for doing not much work. Can we sell ourselves? Does it work? Is there a EA-free website where we can advertise. We were thinking of trying it ourselves for a few months in the prime selling period of spring/Easter and if it doesn't work out then appointing an EA.

Any experience or helpful pointers? Going out to work on her garden now: will catch up with comments later. TIA

You could try selling through a DIY site like Sarah Beeney's Tepilo.Could advertise in local paper, put up your own sign etc. Depends who you think would buy though - if you need to advertise to a wide market you may get a better price with the Agent and so they would pay for themselves.
Sites such as Rightmove that a lot of people use to source possible houses only allow agent adverts and agents can also help keep the chain together by checking in with the buyers about mortgage progression etc. although they can also lie about quantity of viewings and try to get you to take a low offer to push through the sale (as it doesn't affect their commission a lot).

I think most viewers appreciate if a house is clean and uncluttered (even if the decor is dated) and the garden tidy.If you do viewings yourself don't crowd the viewer or talk too much about what your gran did to the house etc as they need to imagine that they could live there.
get three local agents round to value the house though (its always free) and ask lots of questions about likely buyers, realsitic price, what recent sales they ahve made in area etc - pump their knowledge you are under no obligation to them. You can then set a well reasoned market price. Beware of developers looking for a cheap bargain with an empty old persons house.

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Just negotiate down to 1%, tell the EA to take it or leave it. You need to be on rightmove IMO everybody uses it.

No-one in the family has bought or sold for ages so we are all a bit out of the loop.

Thanks for the Tepilo tip, haggis. That was exactly the sort of thing I was thinking about. I suppose we could either use it to sell or use it as a way to negotiate down the EA's fees.

There are a number of on-line agents who charge a fixed fee for marketing your house. The services they offer range from just providing access to websites such as Rightmove through to preparing the house details, posting them on various websites, providing stats on how many views they're getting, taking calls from buyers and negotiating offers (pretty much everything a traditional EA would do but without the lies and the cheap suits).

I've used an online agency called Housenetwork and would never use a traditional estate agent again.
Mary Portas did a TV show recently and basically asked the question "Why does anybody use an estate agent anymore?"
Use an online agent - they'll put it on Rightmove and field the calls - you do the viewings - Bob's your live-in lover!
Rationally, the only reason I can think of why anybody would use an agent is if they can't or won't do the viewings themselves.
Estate agents charge a lot of money to send a school leaver round with the keys and tell your potential buyers it's south-facing in the afternoon.

My Dh is a manager of a estate agency and he works a 60 hour week at the moment for a basic pay of just £20K per annum. They do all work hard. Some are on basic pay of £10K so if you don't work hard you starve!

We sold through House Network in January. It cost us about £1000 against an estate agent fee of £5k (at 1.25%). You can choose a cheaper option and sell for much less than £1000, it depends which 'package' you choose in terms of whether you pay it all up-front (cheaper) or pay a small amount up front and the rest if/when it sells.

Whichever you choose, the house goes on Rightmove and all the usual portals. Photos are good (better than some of our local estate agent ones) and floorplans/virtual tours also included.

I was really pleased with them. We had two offers in 9 weeks (sold to the second one) and sold for about 97% of the asking price. The crux is whether the house is very sellable. If a house sells itself (which ours did - completely 'done up' - all Farrow and Ball and Laura Ashley and catchment for good primary school) then House Network is a winner. If you think people will need convincing to view/buy then you need a traditional estate agent.

You have to be happy to do the viewings yourself (I actually prefer this). You certainly don't get timewasters and carpet treaders like you do when an estate agent has 'sent' them on a viewing (why do people allow themselves to be 'sent'??).

BTW, I don't doubt they work hard (traditional agents) but at the same time, I worked hard to renovate the house. When I sold my first property, the estate agents got a large chunk of my profit depite the fact all they'd done was post pictures in their window (before the days of RightMove).

I do wonder why people with very sellable homes consider paying an estate agent to convince people to view and buy. They could do that themselves.

Agree with all you've said bistokids! We too used house network and we paid option 1 so just £425 up front +VAT with 0 on completion! We bought a board too (£40) so the total cost was around £550.

Our house sold to the second viewer within 3 weeks and we got what we wanted! We made it very sellable though - we spent £1500 sprucing it up (replastering, gutters, pointing, painting etc..) and then had the carpets and windows cleaned and touched up our bathroom, kitchen etc... so an agent really couldn't have done us any good. Our house sold itself; that and the nice area/good schools etc... and I was happy to do the viewings since who knows my property better than me?

I would say the picture are fab and these guys are fast. If you ring them on the Wed, they'll come out within 24 hours and do the photo's, room plan etc.. and then you are live on rightmove within the next 24 hours.

Their property description leaves a lot to be desired, and the little blurb at the beginning of the listing describing the area/schools/transport links etc. is non-existent and you have to do it yourself if you want it to read well.

But this takes 10 minutes of your time.

I would recommend them wholeheartedly! If you dont' feel the need to have agents ringing you up and getting in random people who are looking for the hell of it and you are happy to do viewings and do mostly online dealings with your agent (fab in my opinion) then these guys are good.

i will never use a traditional agent again and using House network has saved me circa £6k

their pictures

p.s. I don't work for housenetwork - I'm just so pleased to have saved so much money

Word of advice, when you used House Network, it's still an EA, although an online one and they are bound by the rules of the NAEA!

If you use a private sale website (Tepilo) you won't get onto rightmove and all the other major portals and the stats are that 90% of people looking to buy do it online, and 90% of them go to rightmove so you need to be on there!

Advertising on private sale sight too can be done in addition and do no harm, but if you want the traffic, rightmove is your best bet

There is a great website called the advisory (just google it) and it has loads of fab information about buying/selling and other cheaper options.

I used an online conveyancer (doesn't have to be local since you don't need to meet them) and also saved money on this and she is fab and contable whenever I need to ring her

I was just going to make that point! Do trust the NAEA accredited ones and don't trust anyone else!