Has anyone bought a property without using Estate Agents? How did you deal with the practicalities??

[ShillingtonsSqueeze]

We're trying to buy a property in a sought after part of our city.

We plan to leaflet drop a few streets and I've drawn up a leaflet explaining that we are serious, proceedable buyers.

But I'm not sure how to progress matters if anyone contacts us to say they're thinking of selling. Does anyone have any advice or experience?

Do you get a valuation each from a local EA? Or a surveyor? And does it work if you are in a chain? Or do you get nowhere trying to chase others solicitors or estate agents?

Any advice is gratefully appreciated!

I bought my house from my landlord - re valuation - I looked on rightmove etc what was on the market and what has sold recently - then made an offer -went back and forward a bit and agreed on a price -
got my solictor to deal with theirs -
we weren't in a chain though
and my experience - could just be me though that at some point in a house purchase/sale there is a difficult point - EA are helpful when this happens - but our sale didn't fall through due to it - it was just a bit more stressful

Thanks Moving

I'm not too worried about negotiating face to face with a seller, but as you say, my concern would be that if there was a chain an EA might be useful in holding things together if things got tough.

Hmm, will wait and see if anyone replies!

Watching and waiting, as it looks like we might be about to do the same thing and I have wondered the same!

Yep - we are.
Do most stuff through the solicitors .

I think your expectations of EAs are too high! - once the offer's accepted (and the level of that offer is your decision to make, even EA valuations can vary enormously and not worth a bean - they vary wildly)
I agree with PP Honk, most goes through the solicitor once you are agreed on price anyway. Your survey and searches are what matters - your survey will give you comfort on the price anyway.
I would write a letter rather than a leaflet, and I don't think you need to go into too many details - just give your name and contact details and express interest and it's pretty clear you are serious.
Dont know about chains but your offer will never be attractive if you then have to start marketing your own place. As a seller I wouldn't bother personally.

We sold our house through an internet estate agent who did nothing more than advertise the property. It involved face to face negotiations, lots of contact with buyer. It was great - problems were easily resolved by just phoning up the buyer (and there were some thorny ones) and solicitors did all the tricky stuff.

We bought our new house through an estate agent - they told us lies, made us feel that the sellers were going to pull out at any moment, kept putting pressure on us to do things resulting in stress for buyer and seller.

The only thing they came in handy for was doing the valuation of our house which sold for more than two of the 4 valuations we had had. The valuations on websites such as right move and zoopla were pretty near the mark and if you want to pay there is something called Housecheck or similar that does them and is used by lots of EAs.

IMO I would avoid them like the plague

We bought a house by putting letters through doors last year. The process was really easy as almost everything is done by the solicitors anyway. I think the only benefit of having an estate agent as a seller is that they check the chain. We didn't need to do this as we were buying. I'd definitely go for it.
We already had a good idea of the price for the area.

Hmm - thanks everyone.

As I say, I'm not worried about negotiating over price/sticky issues but more worried about us being at the bottom of a long chain and not having an EA to confirm this/chase things up if it looks like its falling apart.

Will see what happens with the leaflet drop, but it sounds like it may work better with no/short chain. Or maybe my expectations of EA's are too high!!

We sold ours without an EA about 5 years ago. TBH I found it easier to deal with the problems myself rather than rely on an EA to do it. Just one less phone call to make in my opinion!

And as everyone else says the solicitors do most of the work anyway. Ours was happy to do it without an EA involved.