Online estate agents

[SquedgieBeckenheim]

Has anyone used these - purplebricks etc? Any positive or negative stories would be appreciated!
We are looking to sell our house, DH wants to use an online agent as it's cheaper, but I'd prefer to go traditional route as I like to deal with people in person.
If feedback is overwhelmingly positive I will concede defeat and go with them (cheaper agent does mean bigger deposit!) If they're rubbish though I don't want to end up paying twice.

It's a tough market out there & IME you need all the help. We had online & ended up getting a traditional EA who have been brilliant.

Depends. We sold within 24hours with house simple. However, we wrote a good description of the house, made sure photos were excellent, had decluttered aggressively and priced realistically. We also lived in a relatively popular area selling a popular sized house.
If you live somewhere like that, then absolutely use an online agent. Purple bricks aren't the best though (tend to over value round here with poor photos). I would whole heartedly recommend house simple though and you can talk to them on the phone whenever you need.

we sold within a fortnight with House Network and were really pleased with them.

They have awful reviews and I'd never buy a PB house as I know the price will drop a HUGE amount because they can't price them.

Everything I've ever seen with Purple Bricks has terrible photos and is about 100k over priced.

I used Emoov back in January and sold 20k over asking within 48hrs. I was smug with myself for saving a fortune on fees, that's until it all went tits up. Problem is online agents get paid regardless so they don't have the same motivation to push a sale through like a local agent.

My buyers couldn't afford the mortgage but that only came to light 4.5 months down the line (they were not vetted properly imo) and at the risk of losing the house I wanted to buy I signed up with the same local agent. I sold again within 48 hours. There is no comparison, this time round the agents have pushed and pushed the sale, they call me every week with an update and have sorted out many problems along the way.

There's no way I'd put the most stressful thing you can go through in the hands of incompetent agents. Don't do it!

House simple did push and push our sale to be fair. They also didn't get paid until the house sold. (Just to counter emoov review above)

We've just bought a house listed by purple bricks. The photos / online details were not good, but the valuation was ok.

All it's meant is that I have had a lot more work to do chasing everything through & keeping the momentum going which a traditional agent would normally do. Even at the point of offering, it was hard to get hold of the 'agent'. Also, we had slightly tricksy buyers (first time, nervous) & our trad EA was invaluable at keeping stuff going & actually getting them to exchange.

I expect our vendors would say it's fab as they've paid less & got the price they wanted for their house. As a buyer it hasn't been a great experience tho. You also need to not mind having personal contact with your buyers - luckily our vendors are lovely and we're reasonable people so managed to keep everything on track.

Tepilo is terrible. Purple rocks has the option of paying for a real person to conduct viewings. From experience the phrplebrcks agents are far far better than those from bricks and mortar agents.

We're a chain involving an online estate agent and can echo what others have said. They've been poor with communication and pushing the sale through after a price had been agreed.

My vendor has used Emoov to sell. They were fine at booking and offer stage but their progression team is pretty rubbish.

I feel like I'm pushing the whole thing forward single-handedly!

Thanks for all your feedback. Personally I don't want to be having to chase stuff up (poorly baby needs to be my main focus) so I will make sure we go for a good traditional estate agent.

We signed up with Purplebricks and they lied to us telling us we needed a report updating which we knew we didn't as our current one was fine.
We cancelled with them and they sent various texts/emails/voicemails threatening us as we had cancelled the payment. We kept replying with the same line "see you in court" and they eventually went away. It was a nightmare and the worst thing we have ever signed up for.

As someone looking to buy a property we've found Purplebricks to be a bit of a pain in the arse. Arranged to see a property online and we were shown around by the current tenant (no work for PB). Loved it, and decided to offer. You offer through the website, and have to answer some questions on your situation, and there's a space for a personal message which we used to explain our position more thoroughly.
We immediately got a call from a PB agent from a personal mobile number who said he saw we'd offered, and started asking me all the same questions I'd just answered. I said I'd already put a lot of info on the site, and he said he 'wasn't in front of his computer' so couldn't see it. All a bit odd and unprofessional. He told us that there were three offers (with ours highest) and ten more viewings this week which the vendor intended to honour, and would make a decision on Friday and ask for best & final offers.
On the Thursday I called him back, as I had no idea how the best & final thing worked on the site, and he initially had no idea who I was or what I was talking about After reminding him that he was getting best & finals from the offers on the property he said that it would all be done online, the vendor would decline our initial offer and then we should resubmit our best.
That happened that night, and we submitted our best offer (loved the house, went £12.5k over asking). Had an email back next morning from the vendor saying that was acceptable, and we were thrilled.
An hour later I get an email saying 'our offer has been updated' assuming it would say accepted, and it had been declined! EA did not answer calls, emailed vendor, said he'd had a better offer.
It was all a frustrating stressful mess, with no structure or organisation, and I hated dealing with everything over the site rather than professional people to call and speak to.
Am now actively avoiding houses that are marketed by PurpleBricks.

Sorry that was a right essay!

Online agents are fine in a fast moving market where anything sells. We bought a house through Tepilo and it was SO stressful and I feel like we paid the price of the vendor saving a few £££. The house sale had fallen through twice before we bought it and I can see why, we would have walked away if there had been another house on the market that suited us. The market near us has changed and buyers are in a stronger position now so would look elsewhere.

I sold my house using Visum and paid about £250 to do it - and that included hiring a wide angle camera lens for photos and having a sign made. Like Nan0second I had a house in a good location, decluttered/staged the house for photos.

I was very lucky that I had two offers from short chains, and I was a buyer in a previous life so happy to negotiate and ask difficult questions to get the strongest offer, and to keep the momentum going till the sale went through.

Was all set to do it a second time for my partner but his neighbours put in an offer as soon as they found out he was moving.