Has anyone used an online estate agent to market/sell their house and how was it?

[MillieMoodle]

DH and I are thinking of selling our house. We've had one agent round to value it and are pretty happy with the valuation given.

My work involves a lot of dealings with estate agents and I'm always astounded at how much they charge! Even 1.25% (+ VAT) of the property value seems very high to me.

I've been looking at online agents which are quite a bit cheaper so wondered if anyone has used one and what you thought of them? Good value for money or a waste of time? Would you use one again? How quickly did your house sell?

Many thanks in advance

We used eMoov in 2013. They were fab. They did the photos, handled all the phone calls and negotiations etc, got the house on right move. We had to do the viewings but that was fine. I think we were the best people to sell our house.

We would definitely use them again. It was only £500!

Thanks for your reply
Did you pay up front and how quickly did you sell? How long did they market it for? I am quite keen to use online but DH is a bit unsure. We've moved twice before and both times used local, high street agents who were crap!

If you're in a popular, high turnover area then it's a contender. If you're in a rural area or the property needs a bit of selling for any reason then an agent is probably best.

We had a nice place in a rural hamlet and tried the diy route. Didn't work. It needed an agent to put it under the noses of people that were looking at nearby places but perhaps hadn't considered our village.

We're in a village of about 750 houses. It's quite a popular village and houses seem to sell pretty quickly. We're rural-ish - about 6 miles from the nearest big town in one direction and 15 miles or so from a city in the other direction.

We were urban in a very popular part of the city (not London). House was under offer within a week of going on the market and went for £2.5k over asking price.

Yes payment was upfront.