never sold a house before

[dementedma]

And am having to sell our flat for various reasons. Dont know where to begin. Am in Scotland so need a homeowner pack thingy.Finances in meltdown so dont have money for legals, estate agents etc. Think/hope will have about 30k equity depending on valuation. Any advice gratefully received.

I can offer no other suggestion than to Google (am in England).

If you haven't done so already, you'll find plenty of support for your situation, should you care to share on the appropriate board (legal? relationships?)

During my divorce, and recent private sale, I just focussed on doing the next step.

Some companies will accept payment on completion. Larger estate agents who have their own surveyors department may well be negotiated with to do this. Many solicitors also will work on this basis, but you need to be upfront. Some work on a month by month basis and will want a partial payment upfront. (My experience is based on sales in England and Wales but I would imagine that Scottish companies are as much up for negotiation as English/ Welsh ones)

If you want to get best value for your property, declutter, clean and do any obvious minor repairs.

If you've got family/ a friend who'll let you store some stuff with them till you sell consider creating space by doing so.

The estate agents are your first viewers. They need to see the place at its best to give it best value and to be positive in recommending it to buyers.

We have just had our estate agent pics taken today OP, selling for the first time eek! Hold my hand!

We went with an online agent to save on fees (£700ish vs however many grand it would otherwise be), but moving will still cost us about £15k all in all , DH has estimated.

We got a storage unit to put lots of occasionally-used items in, £250 ish for 4 months, has made such a difference to our flat! The spare room (previously the junk room) looks way better and the whole flat looks way less cluttered :)

That's all we've done so far. Flat should be online some point this weekend so I'm going to follow this thread in case there's any viewing advice! Also moving advice - will have a newborn when the time comes!

Oh also valuations - we got 2 estate agents round, and then we had to remortgage the flat anyway so got another valuation from the mortgage company.

Get yourself to one of the solicitor property centres eg espc (edinburgh) gspc (glasgow) pspc (Perthshire) you get the idea. Have a chat to someone who will guide you through the system. They probably have some good stuff online. Depending where in scotland you don't need to have an estate agent in addition to solicitor (just depends on local market). You should be able to get some good free advice (including a breakdown of costs) prior to signing with anyone. You will need a good property solicitor.

make sure your estate agent also advertises on right move, most solicitors/estate agents only appear on the espc/gspc
some places may let you pay for the home report and epc on completion

Thank you all. Will try and understand all this!

15k to move? Really?
In which case, we are stuck here!
Do we need and estate agent or a solicitor or both?

Definitely need solicitor - you can choose whether to have an estate agent as well (work out what most people near you do). The biggest expensive of buying and selling is stamp duty which I imagine is the biggest chunk of the 15k. Only relevant if you are planning to buy as well. Most fees are taken from the profits of the sale. upfront costs generally include home report and schedule and marketing. Also removal costs and Mortgage booking fees if relevant.

I'm in England and sold a house last year. The only upfront cost incurred was a £50 payment for disbursements to the solicitor. We had an EPC from a couple of years earlier so didn't need a new one. As pp have stated, the estate agent fees and solicitor's fees are deducted from the proceeds of the sale.

When we moved from a two bed house to a three bed a few years ago, our moving costs were about £3k. That including removal firm, professional cleaners (new house was filthy) and a number of things we had to buy straight away as there was no built in storage in the new place, unlike the old one which had lots. There were other things too, but I can't remember what they were.

Yes that £15k includes stamp duty! Thank god!!!!

What are disbursements? This is all very helpful, thank you