Estate Agents fee structure

[PleaseSell2018]

We are hoping to go on the market shortly so have spoken to a few agencies, valuations have been given but as I've been watching the market I've got a rough idea what I think it can sell for (which is lower than what they are saying).

My preferred agents came yesterday and their fee structure is

• 2% of sold price OR
• fixed price based on what the house is first listed at 1.5%

Now they want to list at £375k for the pricing brackets which I get, but I think it will sell for between £345 and £360. I asked about putting it on at £365k and the hard sell came thick and fast and by this stage I needed to get back to my work so kind of just ummed and ahhed with his reasoning and said I'll speak with DH and come back to them.

We are in London, market is slow but my preferred agents are well known locally (not the agent starting with F!) but the fee structure really annoys me.

I want the house to sell so should I just suck it up? The other agency offered 1.25% on sold price and lock in of only 8 weeks. We need to be gone by the end of summer.

I was not going to let this stress me and I've hit a hurdle already and we're not even on the market!

Those rates seem really toppy to me. We're on the outskirts of London and have been offered 1.25 and 1%.

Hi. We fixed our fee up front, and it was below any of the rates you have quoted. I thought agents were in the realms of 1.25% and below these days - 2% is nuts.

We are not in London, but we are in a "hot" area.

They work for you so tell them what you want to market at and what you are prepared to pay in terms of their fees. Their fee structure is grasping imo. If they won't negotiate then go elsewhere.

That's how I feel. I thought 1.5% would be the top end but 2%, I nearly fell off my chair.

I don't want to necessarily just go with the cheapest but it felt a bit...underhand? Even though they were upfront with it I thought actually I might end up paying 1.35% on the actual sell price.

He said agency lock-in period and fee percentages were non-negotiable.

Maybe we should go with the other agency.

Tell them you’ll go with the other agent if they can’t match it and see what they say, you might be surprised. Estate agents dropped their fees when we said no really wish they would just give you the best price from the off.

He said agency lock-in period and fee percentages were non-negotiable.
Haha! That's a good one, he's definitely trying it on. Everything is negotiable.

Source: am estate agent.

I will give them the option of matching the other agency and if they can't (or won't) then I think we'll go with the other agency.

It'll be interesting to see how he responds - go for it. He'll tell you they're worth it, the other agents are crap, etc, etc.

1% max. We're in a thriving town in Berkshire so SE and commuting distance of London and 2% was floated by a well known chain but they could do a special rate of 1.5%.

We told them 1% was the max we were prepared to pay and went with another agent at 0.9%. Then they rang and offered us 1% and we said too late, we are going with another agent like we said.

Then they rang and hassled again and said they could offer a special rate of less than 1%. We told them they had had their chance to negotiate and we were sticking with our decision. Then they hand-delivered a letter saying something about (I didn't read it, it went straight in the bin) 'Chosen agent under-selling your house'. Bonkers and desperate.

They also over-valued our house supposedly to get us to go with them, though the offers we had came in well below the lower price mutually agreed with our chosen agent. So if we had gone with them I'm sure we would have had less interest and fewer viewers.

After all, the buyers are all the same regardless of who is marketing the property.

We’re not central London- zone 6, but a hot spot for commuting. I think it depends how much property there is available versus the demand. We got ours at .8% and 6 week contract.

Our agent quoted 1.5% but very quickly offered 1% which is what we went with. It helped that we said we had Purple Bricks to value our property as well (though not very impressed with them!) and that another agent will do it for 1%. It helps that we are in a fairly sought after village so they know it's going to be easy money.

Everything is negotiable! I got 1.2% in zone 2.

Are they really worth that much more than any other EA?

So the preferred agency agreed to a reduced percentage fee of sold price.

I asked him to send through a copy of the contract so I can review before signing next week and the wording says the fee is to be paid against the 'eventual Selling Price' and then the next paragraph says the payment will be XX% of Selling Price.

I want to ask them to change it to 'sold price' as they tried to push the XX% against listed price (selling price??) originally.

But am I just being pedantic?

If Selling Price is capitalised then it's a term which should be defined elsewhere in the document: is this not the case?

I can only find it mentioned as "...the eventual selling price ("Selling Price")..."