Not using an estate agent to sell. Has anyone done this? What do EAs actually do anyway?!

[threeleftfeet]

A poster on another thread suggested we consider selling our house ourselves (thanks for that KatieMiddleton!) and it's got me thinking it might be worth considering, as (despite what's happening nationally), my flat is in a fast-moving market, with a lot of demand, where prices are rising, so it should sell quickly.

Can you sell a flat without an estate agent?

I'd be really interested to know - as anyone here actually done this?

And what does an EA actually do anyway, except the marketing bit?

Of course you can do it yourself - you just need to have some time to field calls, do viewings and ensure that you can generate enough interest etc.

The EA is basically an intermediary between you and the buyers - a good one will be marketing to buyers on and off their books, and smoothing the process so that the solicitors are fully informed, have all of the information that they need and will negotiate to resolve any issues that come up between offer and completion - ie renegotiating once surveys have been done etc.

As to the marketing, there are many sites that will allow you to advertise your house through them - but it's a question of whether enough people will see something on a 'smaller' website than something like Rightmove.

You could consider using an online only estate agent like housenetwork so you appear on rightmove/zoopla etc. They do everything a local estate agent does (prepare details, take calls, arrange viewings, negotiate with buyers, passes on offers, prepare the sales memorandum etc) except you have to do all the viewings yourself.

Cost us about £600 upfront (no commission) and we have been incredibly impressed with the service - all via an online interface you have total control of your rightmove details and pics (you can change them daily if you want), we can see our rightmove statistics (hit rate, click through rate etc), get email notifications of the viewings and detailed feedback from all viewers. We sold our house with them about 2 weeks ago, after 7 weeks on the market. We definitely couldn't have done any better with a traditional agent. I think its a no-brainer if you have the type of house that will sell itself.

Really useful advice, thanks PanicMode and mahonga.

Off to look at online-only, I hadn't heard of that before but of course it makes sense!

if you decide to go with housenetwork, they have a 5% discount code on their page here:

www.housenetwork.co.uk/promotional_code.asp

Try upad for setting up details online, doing pics. Floorplans etc
Google them and an old article appears, click through and have 50% discount code.

IMO an estate agent is potentially useful for three things:

1 - doing viewings. Whether you find this useful depends on whether you have the time to arrange and do viewings yourself. Bear in mind viewers often want to change appointments, don't turn up, want to view at the last minute etc so it can be a lot easier to let an EA handle all that.

2 - being an intermediary in price negotiations. Sometimes it's easier as a seller to get your EA to play hardball and demand a higher price, than it is to do it yourself. Whether you find this useful depends on how comfortable you are negotiating on your own behalf.

3 - handling the sale process once under offer, basically chasing both sides to ensure the next steps are happening, intermediary in any further negotiations following survey etc. Again whether you find this useful depends on whether you are happy doing all such chasing and all negotiation yourself. (Even with an EA you will need to do a lot of chasing so may not be much difference here).

I would have said 4 - photos and floorplan but it's fairly easy to do these yourself using housenetwork or similar. They won't be as polished as (some) EA's photos but many EA photos are only amateur level anyway.

Of course the EA is only useful for these things if they are actually good at them!

I did it without an estate agent and it was easy enough.
With some of the money I saved I treated us to a new sofa and Dyson hoover for our new home!

I think the only downside with an online estate agent is you don't have the hand-holding you get from a local agent, e.g. if you get no viewings one week and you start to panic, your local estate agent would say 'yes, we've seen a dip in viewings this week, it's the same for everyone, we're confident in the next couple of weeks things will change' etc etc. You also don't get any advice on price, whereas a local agent would be able to advise whether to drop the price, or hold out, depending on what they have sold in the next street last week.

If you're in a fast moving market, as we were, then you should be able to negotiate yourself a pretty low commission percentage with any estate agent.

I'd considered selling without an EA, and they were indeed rubbish when it came to marketing and pricing, but proved their worth in handling the bidding process and then keeping the sale going when it seemed it might fall through, which was down to their good contacts with the surveyor.

I'm seriously considering something like housenetwork, it seems like a great idea.

Thanks for the discount code mahonga!

Useful questions, minipie, thanks.

1 - doing viewings. - reckon I've got time to do this as I work part-time and can easily work from home.

2 - I'm good at negotiating

3 - I'm hoping housenetwork would help with this - although perhaps I've overestimated what they do?! I'm not great at chasing but if it'll save me £5K+ then I'll do it!!

"If you're in a fast moving market, as we were, then you should be able to negotiate yourself a pretty low commission percentage with any estate agent."

I'll give it a go! Got a few coming round next week.

We missed out on a house that was for sale privately on Sarah Beeny's website www.tepilo.com/ t'was sold before we could blink.

I've always been dubious about the value of estate agents ever since buying our current house.

Basically, we were in a good position (no chain) and the vendor was desperate to sell. Went in with a pretty low offer - he refused, as expected. Added £10k which still made the offer pretty low (£70k less tha what the identical house next door went for. Refused again. Told estate agent we could maybe add £5k. Her respnse? Don't bother offering any more, I'll get him to accept the second offer. And she did. Which was good news for us but I remember thinking I would never use that estate agency when the time came to sell up and move on.

Agreeing a house sale is not the difficult bit, its all the legal stuff that comes afterwards where EAs earn their fees, imo.

They are a PITA and do very little if they can get away with it but they are a useful middleman between buyer seller and solicitors etc.

Mintyy - EAs don't do any legal stuff. It's the lawyers that you pay to do that. EAs are simply sales people.

I meant, of course, being the central contract point whilst all the legal stuff is going on after the sale has been agreed. It is not only solicitors who are involved from the sale agreed point onwards; it is surveyors, often builders, other tradesmen and of course all the other agents/solicitors/surveyors/ vendors/ purchasers involved up and down the chain. They are not always simply sales people.