PurpleBricks - Views?

[helloheather]

Hello,

Currently in the process of selling our first home and have instructed PurpleBricks on the basis that they were much cheaper than high street quotes we received.

We are also in the process of buying and I have been getting really frustrated trying to book viewings through agents (with purple bricks you set up your 'diary' online and people can book straight through the website - def positive for them I would say).

My main concern is, from a buyers perspective, do you feel comfortable buying/putting an offer in basically through an app rather than having an agent there to speak to?

We do our own viewings at the moment but for an additional fee we could have the purple bricks agent so them for us, just he wouldn't have as much availability as we do.

Any other general experiences of PurpleBricks would be appreciated!

Purple bricks don't do any progress / sales chasing. If you want updates from solicitors etc you will need to do it all yourself.

We are house hunting at the moment and have viewed several houses on with local agents. Arranging viewings has been perfectly easy, often on the day we call. Agents or owners have done the viewings, depending on their preference. I much prefer being shown around by the agent with the owner out, and would request this for a second viewing. We have avoided even viewing a house on with Purple Bricks. I think buying a house is stressful enough without having to deal with a bargain basement agent on the other side. I also wonder if an owner tries to sell their house on the cheap, what else will they try to cut corners with? It just seems to be inviting extra stress and having to do the tasks estate agents are paid to do. I think with services like estate agents, you get what you pay for. That's just my view, I'm sure lots of others would not be as bothered, but we have good agents locally who sink or swim on their reputation, so it makes sense to work with them.

As a buyer my main concern is the speed and progress of the sale after the offer has been accepted, both because of the lack of traditional estate agent helping smooth things along and because of the reputation of the solicitors/conveyancers used by PB.

And like Boogle, we have avoided houses on with PB for similar reasons. I have noticed that houses that are difficult to sell are on with PB rather than a standard estate agent - we have done drive bys on four. Two had obvious subsidence and the third backs on to a supermarket carpark, the fourth had no garden and a driveway shared with a block of flats (built on the garden). I haven't registered on the website and won't unless a truly truly perfect house comes up on the site.

I like having the estate agent as an intermediary, I am not a negotiator and I dislike confrontation. House buying can be a fraught process, full of tension and high emotion, in the past we have been very glad of the estate agent being in the middle.

I looked at one house with PB as one with emove. I don't mind being shown round by the vendors - both made me feel v comfortable and they showed their homes off well and also allowed me to have a nosey without them being intrusive.

Zero follow up on feedback tho.

I would not sell with an online agent.

There is a big thread about them on here. Have a search. Not good reviews generally.

Thanks so much everyone! Probably should have posted this before we went with them but that's life!!

I quite like the person to person element, I have a slight distrust of agents when it comes to imaginary offers or pressures, but I fully appreciate that isn't for everyone.

We've been on the market 3 weeks and had about 30 viewings, a few of which have gone through to offers but then they've pulled out at a later date. I think I'll give it another month and then think about relisting with a more typical agent.

Thanks again.

We have just moved into a house we bought through PB. All was fine, but we had an extremely short chain and our EA was great, so made sure that the sale progressed quickly (6 weeks from offer being accepted).
It was very easy to arrange viewings etc through PB and we didn't mind being shown around by the owners (in fact, we looked at around ten houses and we were never shown around by an agent, regardless of who they were selling with).

Our vendors didn't use the PB conveyance service, though. I've heard bad things about that element.

I've just sold 2 houses with the.

You pay for what you get, of course. But my online conveyencer did all my chasing etc and I didn't do anything.

Both sales went very smoothly and both within 3 months start to finish.

I saved approx 4 grand in fees using them. Whats not to like?

You get what you pay for obviously

What most people don't realise is getting viewings and offers is the easy part! Anyone can do that!

The hard part and where agents earn their fee is the sales progressing. Making sure the sale goes through basically-pushing solicitors when they need it- organsing inspections- keeping the buyer on side in case of bad survey reports etc.

So you'll get offers with purple bricks- but then the hard work really begins as you'll be on your own

Just watch out - they charge you their fee whether you sell or not I have been told.

To arrange viewing was problematic, I couldn't believe it. A rude and obstructive person on the other end of the phone who didn't seem to have one clue about the property on their books.

And I would never sell with them. Sorry.

we bought a house through purple bricks. would avoid them at all costs. nearly cost us the sale as they misadvised the vendor about a deadline. she used online conveyancers who were equally useless and bordering on incompetent. PB do absolutely nothing to progress the sale. we had to liaise with the vendor directly for everything.

DO NOT TOUCH!!! Useless they don't do anything, yet they want to charge a lot for doing nothing. I used them and only had one viewing, full asking price accepted but they pulled out the evening before, no exchange of contacts were signed even at this late stage. I had to continually chase them up and each time told everything was ok and completion will definitely go ahead, still continually chasing people to the evening before completion to find out that they had not heard from the buyers solicitor for three weeks!!! So why was I continually told that everything was going through nicely. This company is a joke!!! No other viewings ever happened, totally waste of money, they don't care as they get paid anyway, AVOID

Just read this - wish I had seen before we went with them. Useless, communication rubbish and app nearly as bad. They take their money and do little for it. Didn't checked buyer out and wasted money chasing a solicitor that didn't exist!!
Clearly similar experiences across the UK - don't believe all the good reviews 🤔 as we did

Slightly different view here. We are selling with them. All viewings booked easily by the app - so the people who came to look around said - offers handled well and negotiated price. We are doing most of the post sale liaison but we knew that would be the case, hence it being cheaper. We also have a great conveyancer so not much need to chase. We are also in contact with the people buying our house so just sorting stuff out by emailing each other rather then through estate agents so that's personal preference I guess.

If you want updates from solicitors etc you will need to do it all yourself.

That sounds like an advantage to me. Cuts out the middleman.

Shockingly bad IMO. I'm an EA and I have had many upset clients in the office because of them.

Out of three houses on PB I wanted to view in past three months we have managed to view one, and that was with PB agent showing us around. The other's I don't think were motivated to sell, as they both said would get back to me with viewing times and didn't
I like the idea of offer going direct to buyer, and doing it online.
With feedback I am less likely to be honest in feedback to owners than an agent.
I don't mind owners showing us round as can ask a lot more questions, downside is being polite.

I am buying a property through purple bricks and selling one too.

It's not stress-free but I don't for one minute believe that high street agents are necessarily any better.

Yes you have to be prepared to do a lot of the chasing yourself, with all parties. But I'm quite happy to do that to save a few grand.

It really depends on your priorities and your personality.

As a viewer, which is what's important to you as a vendor, I found Purplebricks were fine.
Easy to organise viewings.
Easy to do feedback.
No endless follow up trying to get me to look at unsuitable houses.

I'm buying through PB at the moment. Much better experience than my attempts to purchase through a traditional EA. The viewing process was wonderful - booked a slot online, was confirmed by email and the vendor showed me round. Now, the conveyancers are doing the real work, and we can both get updates from each other.

I absolutely loathe EAs though, so I am willing to deal with a tiny bit of hassle so I don't have a middleman skimming off the top while not adding any value.

We're buyers and have (so far) viewed two houses listed with PB.

One we were shown around by the vendor who seemed very nice. We liked the house and tried to make an offer. I say 'tried' as the vendor had clearly opted for the cheapest possible service, meaning she had to do everything herself; she kept trying to push us up by 5k and kept trying to justify it as being: we'll massage the sales price so it comes under the stamp duty limit which will save you 5k in stamp duty, then I'll sell you my fitted wardrobes for 5k. It took me a couple of days to figure out what the heck she was talking about and that she wasn't aware the stamp duty rules had changed a couple of years ago. Even when i explained this to her she couldn't see that essentially she was trying to 'sell' us the installed fixtures and fittings, which were listed in the sales details, and that she wasn't somehow saving us 5k so we had to find an extra 5k cash (which we really didn't see why we should pay when the fitted wardrobes were listed as fixtures).

We gave up in the end, it was too much hard work and we couldn't see the rest of the purchase process getting any smoother! This lady absolutely needed an EA to guide and advise her....

For the second house we were shown around by someone from PB. He was very nice but had absolutely no knowledge at all about the property, said he 'just opens and locks the houses'. So we didn't have the benefit of interacting with either the vendor or an EA who could 'sell' the features to us and answer our questions, or even counter issues that we pointed out. Even when we said 'would you be able to find out (insert very basic question that any purchaser would want to know)' we were told no, we had to call some other third party whose card he gave us - I never did really understand this other person's role in the scenario. Tried to call the number on the card, there was no answer and no voicemail. So again, we gave up and went to look at something else. It all just felt very unsatisfactory...

We bought a house through Tepilo and if it is typical of online agents I would say avoid. What pisses me off the most, is that we and our High Street EA had to do all the running around that our vendor's agent should have done and our vendor was the one to save £££. It seems to me that all they really offer is a glorified posting on RightMove, everything else you do yourself. And as someone said upthread, finding a buyer is far easier than keeping a sale together and call centre staff just can't do this.