Anyone used an online estate agent?

[Sippingtea]

Having lost our buyer for the second time in two weeks I’ve also lost faith in our estate agent. He promised the world (I know, I know...) and assured us he was confident the buyer was fully on board despite the fact that she hadn’t arranged a survey on our flat. I questioned this numerous times only to be met with various excuses.
Now, after paying nearly 1K for a survey on the house we were going to buy, it appears our buyers have failed to instruct their solicitor despite the process starting over six weeks ago. Last week they made various promises but have failed to follow through. We are gutted.

Anyway, my question is - has anyone tried an online estate agent? Purple Bricks, for example? I don’t see how mine can justify the fee he’s charging and this is a much cheaper option. If we do have to go back on the market - and it’s looking likely - I think I’d rather try my luck with one of these services since the estate agents on the high street appear to do very little anyway...

But I worry the online ones won’t care once they have our money. I believe you pay upfront so there’s no incentive for them to sell, really, is there?

Anyway any advice would be much appreciated.

My parents are going through the process of selling their house through purple bricks. They have really rated it as you still get the advice of an estate agent but without all the lies they feed buyers/sellers. Basically you organise the viewings yourself as people email you through the website, but the estate agent assigned to you does everything else. You can also talk directly to the buyers which cuts out he middle man. I think estate agents often try to play buyers/sellers off each other a lot to try and get more money so this way seems a lot better. Plus you don't pay commission. Good luck xx

Please don't. They are very hit & miss & in part a victim of their own success, as they don't have the time to give to each client that they need in a slow market. We thought same as you, anyone was better than our ex agents. We'd lost our buyer & went on with PB. Our local property comedian expert promised that we wouldn't lose the house we were buying on numerous occasions but when it came to it couldn't deliver. 5 months later we lost the house & cut our losses & went with a proper EA.

It's hit and miss. If your house can sell itself, go with an online like purple bricks. You need to be the one to set the asking price.

If you haven't sold within 2-3 weeks, expect to be pressured in to lowering the price. This is how they get results and the very high % of houses sold within x days.

A traditional EA should earn their fee by bringing viewers to your property who did not enquire about it. Eg someone looking at properties on the next street in a similar price range would be brought to you as well. That only works if your EA has a high number of properties in your area.

Good luck

Thanks for the advice, everyone. Sounds like it could be risky but TwinkleMerrick filled me with such hope! I’m tempted but perhaps I’ll change estate agents instead after what MovingThisYearHopefully has been through.

Our flat won’t sell easily shoelaces although I think I could do a better job of the viewings than our estate agent. He showed us another property and barely said a word, I was the one having to say “Oh this is a nice space. You could knock down that wall...Lots of storage” etc.

I just don’t feel any of them really deserve such a big cut when they just put the property on Rightmove and do a few viewings. Maybe a different agent will convince me otherwise but I’m not holding my breath...

i used house network.admitedly very easy house to sell. but they were very good at progressing the sale. told buyers they needed sols details within 48 hrs and a survey in place within 10 days.

I used house network too. I found them to be very good but I was selling a relatively new build, and a few similar ones were already on the market, so the valuation part was really easy.

They did the speaking to the potential buyers, taking offers, chasing up etc. We did all the viewings though, but often with a traditional estate agent that's also the case and actually you will probably do a better job of it yourself.

I used emoov, they were good but I sometimes feel their negotiation skills weren't as good as we needed as we had a few offers (although if you have any more experience selling than we did you should be ok!). They were great to communicate with and we liked how they were open 7 days. We had purple bricks in our chain and everyone hated them, not responsive to emails or calls and it nearly meant we lost the house we eventually bought as we couldn't be chain checked easily also other estate agents hate working with them.

I’d be wary of using any agent who you pay regardless of whether they sell your house. It may be a lower fee but what incentive do they have to sell the house if they have collected their fee?

Call a few estate agents and register your details with them, see how good they are at dealing with your enquiry. Do they encourage you to view houses you wouldn’t have considered? Take time to understand what you are looking to buy? Then put your house for sale with the agent who was best at selling you a house.
Also If they cannot negotiate their own fee will they be able to negotiate and get you the best price for your house?

I’d go with an agent but negotiate the fee. If I has my sale over Id not pay more than 0.5%.

We’re paying ours £2.6k (1.75%) for introducing the buyer - I did the viewing and that was what sold the house. Overall service has been awful, their sales progression team member nearly collapsed the chain because she didn’t pass on information up the chain, and when we complained it was brushed under the carpet. They get paid on completion so in our case at least, I doubt we’ll get any partial refund in light of the piss poor service.

Forgot to add: ours was a local agent. An online agent could have done the same for £800 but I wouldn’t have used them because here at least, they overvalue properties by a huge amount and the vendors end up shifting to a local agent after twelve weeks anyway.

As a buyer I find online agents off-putting. Agree that if your property would sell itself it’s worth a try but not if it could stick.

I do know one house near me that sold on the first day with purple bricks as I tried to arrange a viewing but this is an area where people are literally waiting day by day for something to come up.

We had our previous house on the market for several months with a high street agent. Took it off the market, made a few small costmetic changes, relisted with House Simple and sold within 2 weeks at the asking price.

Remember, with an on-line agent, you're basically relying on the house selling through rightmove listings or a sale board.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to ask your high street agent what they will do over and above this to try and sell your home.

We bought through purple bricks. We found them pretty useless but no more useless than any other estate agent we’ve had the misfortune of dealing with! If you start from a position of they’re all useless you may as well have the price cut...

The BBC reported yesterday that a quarter of estate agents are in financial distress, so it looks like lots of people have started using online agents. www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44681564

I'd consider using one if we ever move again. Our high street agents did nothing to sell our house, so it can't be that much worse.

Well I can only go off the experience if my parents. They did live in a very desirable location so I think this also helped sell their house. They had a good experience, the only issues they had was with the estate agents further down the chain. I guess it's all dependant in the area you live in and what agent you would have assigned to you through the website.

Thanks so much for all the replies.

Lots to think about. I really appreciate all the advice and firsthand experiences of using online agents. Sounds like they’re best for properties that are likely to sell quickly but as many have said, most EAs are rubbish anyway so why not save a few quid?? I’ll think on and hope we get an offer before I have to make a decision...

I used Doorsteps for £259 and had five asking price offers after two days. Its great as a seller but I think not very good for buyers in terms of service.

I'd offer a counter view to that... All the agents round here work Monday to Friday. Saturday most of the day and not at all on Sundays. One of the potential advantages of showing people round yourself with an online agent is the ability to do evening and weekend viewings.. A lot depends on your local agents of course..

If you’re going with PB it might be worth looking up the name of the agent you’re offered on trust pilot, you’ll find reviews specific to them.

I can only speak from the point of view of a buyer. I groan when i see a house is being marketed by PB. They don't know the house, don't answer your emails or questions. You book a viewing online with no personal contact. The agents aren't interested and have no personal connection with the seller. It's a pain in the arse to cancel the viewings as you have to log onto their site and remember passwords etc, some people would just not bother to turn up. i would never use them. They may be cheap, but they don't work to sell your house.

i would reiterate my experience. i paid house network 750 quid. they did a really good rightmove listing with loads of photos. i was confident in doing the viewings. the cheapest estate agent wanted 4500.
as a buyer i looked at rightmove and arranged viewings. the house we bought the owner showed me cos the estate agent couldnt do a sat afternoon.

Local agents aren't always ultra rigid about when they'll do viewings. We were interested in viewing several houses with one agent and they took us on an early evening tour. We ended up buying one of those houses and they were very good at dealing with flaky and often difficult vendors. Vendors were using useless and unresponsive online conveyancers so without that service from the agent when things looked like they were going to crumble, we would have walked (and cried because this house really was the one, in many ways)

I used Urban Sales and Lettings (may be called just Urban now) a few years ago. They were great. Best office service I've experienced from all but one (top qualty independent) local agent.

I have had off-puttingly useless experiences with a number of local and chain agents. Really poor.