Selling our home privately not using estate agents

[999Susan]

We are planning on selling our family home located South of Cambridge and I am wondering about selling it privately rather than going through estate agents. Does anybody have any advice, or hints and tips on the process. Or even where best to privately advertise a house online?

I've seen private house sale adverts in The Sunday Times. I don't know if they work though.

We are selling our house at the moment. I would be reluctant to deal with private sellers and not very keen to buy from an online agent either as I hear they get their fee anyway so are not so interested in a deal actually going through.

We were able to negotiate a very low rate of commission with our agent as, and we are very lucky, our house is in a popular part of East London. We had a few agents round and chose the one we wanted.

We told each of them that others were being considered.

Would you consider trying that?

Thank you that’s very helpful
I just rather fancied the experience of private selling, I don’t have a particular problem with estate agents so I thought I’d explore the possibilities

Go for it. Get several valuations and some great photos and list it on Rightmove. Isn’t this only what agents do? Apart from the great photos. Sorry I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with agents...

If you live in a desirable area / house word of mouth or a facebook post may be sufficient. I have sold this way as have others I know.

The estate agents are just advertisers. Be prepared to negotiate on price and fixtures.

The rest is dealing with solicitors anyway

I’ve read on here a couple of times this week about people having a certain impression of online agents, ie not working hard to sell your house/get the sale over the line as they have already earned their money.

I won’t name the online agency I just used to sell my house, but they were excellent and cost me less than £600 all in. They saved me a minimum of £1400 compared to the high street agents. We went with a high street agent initially, they were utter crap, sent a clueless woman round to do the viewings who didn’t know the first thing about my property. With the online agent, I did the viewings myself and it took a mere six weeks to get an offer. The online agency then did a lot of the chasing solicitors and the buyer for me. They actually managed to persuade my buyer to exchange early as I was going on holiday.

The thing that would worry me with a private sale is not having my property listed on Zoopla or Rightmove. In essence this is all you are paying any registered agent for, as I think it is a minuscule percentage of people who don’t use these websites at least initially. Even my mum uses them and she’s 75, so it’s not just for the young ‘uns

So I would recommend saving a lot of money but still ensuring visibility for your property, ie online agents.

Best of luck!

Thank you everybody it’s been very useful for me to hear your feedback.

Plus this is my first ever post on Mumsnet and it’s been a very positive experience!!

Heh, that’s because the Property forum is frequented mostly by the - shall we say - less confrontational people.

I’d definitely suggest a loin-gird before trying AIBU...

Fi1982 😂

I’d agree that if you are in a desirable location just put the word out amongst your friends and groups etc. We have bought and sold privately and both done on word of mouth.

However, bear in mind that agents generally do a lot of the chasing of the other side’s solicitors when things are going slowly with a buyer. They also act as a buffer between you and a buyer’s incessant questions, unreasonable requests for discounts, and the buyers general moods/whims/rages as the process progresses, especially if there are problems in a part of the chain. I’ve had to do a huge amount of liaison with both the other side’s agent and solicitor (as well as extended family weighing in and it all getting horribly personal). Once a buyer has your direct details you can’t really control the level of personal contact demanded.

Unless I had a cash buyer for my property and had no onward chain (or was at least certain to buy a chain-free property), I wouldn’t do it again! Choose who you sell to very carefully.

Why not use doorsteps? £99 and you can be listed on Rightmove. Then you do everything else yourself. I used them and had a very positive experience.

I know in some villages north of Cambridge people will test the water in local Facebook groups, if you're in a popular village with few houses for sale. They tend to post along the lines of "about to put 4 bed house on the market, big garden, nr school, let me know if you're interested", it worked well when market was busy, seems less effective now it's a bit slower

My Mum sold our family home by putting a small ad in the local paper.
I depends on lots of factors really - your confidence, your availability do respond to texts and e-mails, your confidence to do viewings.
Mainly though, how 'visible' your house is and how desirable - what the market is like in your area at the moment.

I would also have a think about how you'd deal with time wasters, survey issues,sales falling through, long chains etc.
Selling your house can be very emotive would have to be able to deal with that professionally.

The last house I sold had a chain of 5, so it went very, very slowly. Our estate agent had the skills to chivvy everything along and deal with everyone in the chain. It was so stressful for us, I can't imagine doing it without their assistance.

Well I've spent 8 weeks so far looking for a family house South of Cambridge so maybe you can sell it through mumsnet 😂

Purple Bricks. My sister used them (Essex) and found a buyer no problem

Please do great viewings if you do it yourself. Dh looked around a house that had an open house and the couple were really odd! He could not wait to leave!!

My brother bought a house through a private sale. He very clearly expected (and got) a bargain because he knew the sellers weren't paying agent fees. Personally I would only consider it if I were confident I could get at least as much for it as the agent could. If you save £1400 on fees but sell the house for even £1500 less than you would have done through a good agent, then you've lost out.

The trouble is, you never know what it might have sold for if you'd gone for another method. But I still believe the right agent can get a few extra k for a house.

I sold privately in Central London, put it on Ebay for exposure more than anything else, and then the papers, I think it only went in for one or two editions. It sold for what it was worth.

Also sold one privately after having it with agents who spectacularly failed at every turn by bringing people that were totally wrong. It went on an auction site and someone saw it listed before the auction and bought it pretty much straight away. It is a case of getting it seen.