Quick! What % should I be paying the estate agents to sell my house?

[culturemulcher]

I've got a couple of Estate Agents coming on Monday to value our house and I want to get it on the market asap.

What's a reasonable price or percentage these days? Have any of you lovely vipers MNers managed to haggle them down on the percentage?

Any help, advice or even a silly joke to cheer me up would be very welcome.

Well, the house next door was sold for 630K and the estate agents got only 400 pounds out of it. It's exceptional though, our area is fire hot these days.

I just paid 1 % incl vat - watch out for the vat. I also agreed as part of that premium rightmove listing, glossy brochures, regular local paper advert, permanent position in window etc.

Thanks very much for those details - that's interesting and very useful.

Can I ask where (roughly) in the country you are, MisFor?

1.25-1.5% seems standard around here (south London). I have managed to get a quarter of a per cent off in the past... Tbh, they are very aware of competition and know what all the other agencies are asking so I'd be surprised if there was much variation. An agency that recently won my business was one that said there was no tie-in period because they were so confident they could sell the flat at their value - I felt that if they didn't get an offer after a few weeks, I could just walk away and not be stuck with them once they'd run out of clients and I had run out of patience. They lived up to their promise too. Other things to look out for is if they charge you for floorplans (always get a floorplan) or anything else which should be standard.

Had three agents out recently, who quoted 1%, 1.25% and 1.5% all plus VAT. The lower two, have since come back and saying they will do it for less - there isn't much coming on the market around here and I think they're desperate for work.

By the way, it might be worth getting a third agent out as the three we had out all gave differing valuations, one really low, one far too high and one slightly more than we thought.

If you're a confident negotiator and agents will be competing for your business (knowing that the house will sell and they can generate a fee relatively quickly), it may be worth thinking outside the box with the EA, and not simply signing up to a standard rate. My BIL did this when he sold his (sought after) flat in South London – I can't remember the numbers but for arguments sake, he agreed something like 1.5% if they sold it for up to £550k, or 2% if they got over. I've just plucked numbers out of the air, but the difference in potential commission was big enough to give the EAs an incentive and make a big difference for my BIL (needless to say with –greedy—estate agents, they got him the higher price and therefore the additional commission).

We did what Mandy21 suggests. 1% for under asking, 1.25% for asking and 1.5% for more than 5k over asking. I thought this worked well and included all marketing costs. It helped that we got three other agents in because they wanted to match each other. Live in North London and there is a lot of demand and not much supply so I didn't need to do any hard negotiating.

1% was North Wales. I've paid that twice in North Wales, in Somerset and in Wiltshire too. I must stop moving house!

DH, negotiated a fixed fee with a local agent that equated to 0.75% (plus VAT) of the marketed price. We sold for asking price so we did well. We did have an offer under asking but agent admitted the purchaser loved the property and negotiated the asking price. Obviously she was getting the same money just for getting a sale so we thought this was very professional.

.5% for us, we got 2k over the asking price

Wow, thank you so much. It's made me realise just how blindly I was going into this.

mardy and grifty - very good idea, I like it.

Misform thanks - it's good to know that you can get good rates outside London.

peggy you did well! Where abouts in the country are you?

I have a feeling that there isn't much competition round here so I may not get the best rates, but without you lovely lot I wouldn't have made sure that VAT was included, or to ask for premium listings and certainly wouldn't have thought of offering an incentive to the EA to get the asking price or over.

I love MN

Oh! Another question - can anyone tell me how rates work if you opt to use more than one EA at the same time?

You usually pay a higher rate for multiple agency as they do the same work with less chance of selling the place.

Mr euro recently sold his old flat and negotiated a structure fee deal whereby the agent got a higher % if the price obtained was over a certain level. That certainly incentivises the agent!

Thanks eurochick - that's pretty much what I thought. I'm definitely considering a sliding scale fee, it seems to be a good idea.

I won't take offence to being called mardy

oops, sorry maNDy