Anyone sold their house themselves or through an online estate agent?

[RollingThunder]

I really don't want to pay the full estate agents fee if we sell our house. Was wondering if any one else had self sold or used one of these online estate agents that get you on the websites like right move etc?

Any pitfalls? Things to avoid? Companies you can recommend? Etc.

Bump! Anyone?

I had my property in 2008 with an online EA. I had viewings but the difficulty was my short lease as well as repairs problems. So i had no offers. One advantage i that you avoid the cost of sale fee and you can flexibly advertise as you wish. You will be able to do the presentation as you like and may ask the viewer questions you wish. I did not have this flexibility with the EAs. A year after, I put my property for sale with EAs but I had no luck. The difficulty was that they pressed buyers who were not in any sound financial position to purchase and their mortgage was not approved so I lost quite a lot of money.

I have seen often properties back on the market during 2009 to 2012. We were called to see a lovely house in London after the exchange did not go through the last minute - the buyer pulled out because she was unsure. The poor vendors had packed the house and had just cancelled the removal! You never know the surprises.

you can't get on to rightmove and the others without an agent of some sort, either an online one or a 'real' one. As the online ones get paid in advance they don't do anything after the marketing, but if your property is simple and sellable it may be worth a go.

otherwise go for 12 weeks with a local agent, beat them down to 1.5% or below and pester them to make the sale happen. Of course if there is an issue with your property or it is overpriced then it will be hard to sell whatever you do.

We bought a property which was on with an online agent - they put it on the market for lower than the vendor wanted as a come on, attracting lots of viewings in the hope of achieving a quick sale and a starting point for negotiations. It was advertised as "in excess of" but it was stupidly low. Our vendor had been recently widowed and just wanted to move so she just told us what she would accept without telling them as otherwise the tooing & froing would have gone on for ages. We got a bargain and she got the price she wanted, very quickly, without high fees. Her only problem was some viewers were annoyed that she wouldn't accept an offer close to the stupidly low advertised price that the company insisted it was marketed for.

They also encouraged us all to use their solicitors to "save money" but we both opted to use local solicitors as we didn't fancy either them being non local or the prospect of a conflict of interests should problems arise.

Yup, used housenetwork, nothing but praise for them - sold very quickly, saved about 7K, will never use a traditional agent again. Do a search on mumsnet for 'housenetwork' and you'll see lots of other positive recommendations (it's how I decided to use them)

We also used House Network, it was about 7 years ago now but they were great. At the time it cost about £400 if I remember correctly, i'm sure they're more expensive now but will still be far cheaper than high street ones.

They came round and took absolutely loads of photos and a 360 degree tour and then I could log into their website and choose which of the photos I wanted to show on their website and on right move. They gave us a for sale sign too.

You have to do ask your own viewings but then all the houses we viewed which were being sold through 'normal' estate agents had the vendors showing us around rather than the agent doing it.

You can write your own descriptions too so you can make it sound better rather than the standard 'comprising a radiator at the rear' stuff.

PS. They recommended a solicitor for us which we used, but in hindsight I think we should have gone for a local one so we could hurry them along a bit.

Another HouseNetwork user here, sold almost 3 years ago with them and also bought this house through them.

Cannot praise them enough. Floor plans, video and good photos. I did the viewings but then I had previously sold with an agent and conducted the viewings myself.

Paid about £700 up front for a sale (better market back then) they updated feedback on to my account and actually chased for it etc. No commission doesn't mean no incentive to sell your property.

Oh and local solicitor. One we could walk into to sign papers and chivvy along if needed but we didn't need to they were amazing.

If you are in a "highly sought after area" then you can just put your own board outside your property - obv will work better for a house on a busy road than one in a cul-de-sac , or, as my Mum did when she sold our family home some years ago, just put a few lines in the local paper. If there is no particular urgency, it's got to be worth a try to start off with ?

Thank you all very much. We will use the house network!! It's always do good to get a recommendation from MN! Even DH rates that above any others!

Check house prices trends. They will depend on your area. But we read they declined by 1% nationally last year and could go down the the same this year. It is worth trying the sale and see how it goes.

We used HouseNetwork.

The photos were great, as was the floor plan. I especially liked it that we could amend the descriptions ourselves. Although be aware that Property Bee will pick up your changes.

You have to do the viewings yourself, but it's not hard IMO.

I wasn't at all impressed with their after offer service. They disappeared, basically, once the offer was made. I compained at the end and they said I should have told them i wasn't happy, and that they had been adding updates to the website (whether they had or not I have no idea. I expected at least one phonecall or email!).

Using them saved £6K. I would definitely use an online agent again. I will never use a tradtional agent again i don't think.

If I was to use HouseNetwork again I'd want some reassurances about how much they are going to get involved after the offer. I wasn't aware that they should be providing a service then, next time I would be on their case to make sure they did!

One thing we did do which i suppose was quite cheeky was to get four of the traditional agents round to give their valuations as HouseNetwork don't do them. And we used their valuations as our price. However turns out three of them had totally overestimated the price (probably to get our custom!) and it sold for exactly the lowest of the valuations. Having spent quite a bit of time now looking at our local market I feel the price we got was a good one, and the large amounts offered by three of the traditional agents were totally unrealistic, I've seen nothing actually sell for what they were saying. we might get.

Incidentally, if you're looking to buy, make sure you use www.property-bee.com - really useful info - you can see how long houses have been on the market, how the price and description have changed over time.

in 2006. Very easy but a bit slow.