Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Property/DIY

Join our Property forum for renovation, DIY, and house selling advice.

Original poster

Surely everyone checks Rightmove?

56 replies

Zoricthespaceman · 26/09/2018 06:40

About to put house on the market. Favoured high st EA is going to charge 1.5% (incl VAT) to sell our house- an actual fee £18k, if we get the £1.2m asking price. Purple bricks charges a flat fee of £1199 (and you can pay an additional £300 for them to do viewings).DH thinks we’ll get a better price and potentially quicker sale possibly without even going on the open market going through a high end EA. I think that everyone checks Rightmove and the same people will end up looking at the house regardless, and we could save £16k. Anyone used DIY EA for expensive properties?

OP posts:
NicoAndTheNiners · 26/09/2018 07:42

Can you use your PB quote to negotiate with the agent? Friend of mine got an estate agent to price match PB.

Caprimulgus · 26/09/2018 07:48

A few thoughts:

  1. You can negotiate that EA fee down. If they're keen, because they believe they can sell your house, they'll do it for 1.25 or 1%.

  2. The EA will have people on their books and know what they're looking for and will actively contact them. They'll also talk up your property to viewers of other properties and encourage them to view.

  3. Purple Bricks has a mixed reputation and will put some potential buyers off. There are other online estate agents.

  4. Buyers do drop out if conveyancing is slow and for other reasons. The seller's agent needs to be quite 'on it', chasing things up with the buyer's solicitor.

For example; I lost a sale because my 'classic style' EA failed to do this, so didn't alert me or my solicitor - who would have sorted out it by talking to the other side directly - to a problem with my buyer selling their property. In that case I sensed there as a problem, asked a question but didn't chase up strongly enough, for which I kicked myself afterwards (the house went to another buyer for less, six months later). Essentially I needed to be doing the EA job there, of asking questions, keeping track of exactly what was happening, spotting and acting on problems, with my solicitor. That was a mediocre 'high street' agent but it illustrates why you need an agent who is actively owrking for you, as well as the difference between good and mediocre ones.

Jux · 26/09/2018 07:50

Whatever you do, make sure there are floorplans. I always look at those first, they tell you so much about the flow of the house. Pictures are important but it's your stuff and your decor not mine, so far less informative.

Eastpoint · 26/09/2018 07:57

From my experience properties only tend to get in the ‘Property’ section of newspapers when there isn’t much interest - if someone’s looking for a house in an area they will have already seen it by the time it’s made it into a supplement.

landoflostcontent · 26/09/2018 08:00

Agree most people look at Rightmove - I spend/waste a good deal of time on it myself. Can't always find houses on the Purplebrick site even if they are in our road and with a for sale sign outside so wonder what else I might be missing.

Have bought and sold many times over the years (am very old Grin )and any estate agent, high street or online, can get viewers but where they really come into their own is keeping a chain together. When selling my mother's house (urgently needed to cover her care home fees) our high street estate agent moved heaven and earth to keep the chain together with people at the top and bottom of the chain throwing their toys out the pram and threatening to pull out.

sm40 · 26/09/2018 08:00

We negotiated a 'flash' EA down to 1%. (Outer London) Other local people said they paid the 1.5% because that's what they asked for and didn't think to negotiate. So try and knock them down. Also helped we had a local EA who was desperate and offered to charge us 0.8 so used that as leverage!
Also EAs have lots of people in the books and will try and sell them your area/house to get people to look round. Not sure if the online ones will do this.

puguin86 · 26/09/2018 08:01

We sold through PB. The woman who dealt with it was an ex employee of our local EA. She was really good. From what I understand they are self employed the agents . Has anyone in your area sold with them.

We purposely used her because she sold two properties in the next two streets that went to a bidding war. She contacted those who missed out on those sales.

We sold it a week for full asking price.

Truckingonandon · 26/09/2018 08:01

Hhmmm, well, I've just sold a property and tried to do it myself first and got zero interest. So I put it with an EA and it sold straight away (even though the EA was shit and I wrote most of the blurb for them and provided my own photos 🙄).

Waterdropsdown · 26/09/2018 08:04

We are selling in London at a similar price, buying higher and would never use purple bricks.

Our property has never been online, the agent took people they knew were keen buyers round pre going online and we accepted an offer from that. A lot of the houses I have viewed I have seen before they go online. The one we are buying only went online once our offer was accepted - so went on under offer. I’ve seen this happen quite a few times.

Also, It makes you look cheap, so then people wonder what else have they tried to cut corners on. I totally agree agent fees are ridiculous but don’t actually think there is a different way to do it.

another20 · 26/09/2018 08:11

You have a dreadful rate with EA - you can get this down to 0.7 / 0.5 %. They are all fighting for business and go this low. I was an EA recently with v high end agent in a v high end area in SE

senua · 26/09/2018 08:35

You could try a hybrid fee with the EA. Say the house is worth £XXX; they get a fixed fee plus a percentage of selling price that they achieve in excess of £XXX.

LittleBearPad · 26/09/2018 08:57

Definitely negotiate the fee. It’s not fixed by any means. Some sort of incentive arrangement where they get more for asking or above may work.

Tell the two EAs who won’t state their fees that you won’t sign with them without knowing their fees - cheeky buggers.

I’d be sceptical about any high value property listed with an online estate agency. What else is done on the cheap...

Local EAs already have a list of people wanting to buy on your area. Their knowledge and effort to get the sale through are what you pay for - and you only pay it when you’ve sold.

coatsandats · 26/09/2018 09:19

Negotiate the fee. Either down completely, a hybrid fee as PP mentioned above, or a sliding scale fee.

Remember that it's not just about getting people through the door and making an offer, it's all the other stuff: negotiating, sorting out issues in the chain (You might be chain free but your buyers probably won't be), dealing with conveyancing issues and so on.

7to25 · 26/09/2018 09:27

Wealthy friends looked at a property locally. It never went on right move and that was important to them ( for some reason)
It wasn't suitable but somebody bought it "off the market"

BrickByBrick · 26/09/2018 20:56

If I had 1.2 million to spend on a house, I would want to deal with a High Street Estate agent, and as others have said EA's often have potential buyers on their books.

My experience of an online agency is that it was too difficult to even get a viewing arranged let alone anything else.

I have no idea of the market in your area - is there a huge demand for houses of that value? how quickly do they usually sell? there isn't any properties over the 1 million mark in my area (is in neighbouring authorities) so I have no idea what kind of house you even get for that money in other parts of the country.

I will say though that, in my couple of years of following the market in my area, properties often start with the likes of PB then a while later are on the market with a high street agent.

As others have said try and negotiate the commission or add certain caveats.

PattiStanger · 26/09/2018 21:05

I’m looking for a house and I never look at rightmove because the interface is shit

What does this mean? As a buyer I've not had any problems using rightmove so wondering if as a seller it might be different, who decides which website to put the property on? The seller or the agent?

Haireverywhere · 26/09/2018 21:08

We sold through an estate agent with a flat fee and good video tour website in case people didn't check RM.

donquixotedelamancha · 26/09/2018 21:18
  1. Everyone does check rightmove- that's where the vast bulk of leads come from.
  1. 1.5% is way too much commission for a a £1.2M house.
  1. A good EA will be useful and a small % increase in price will eat up the fee. I would get estimates and talk to several local EAs and consider using the best.
  1. Commission should be something like: 1% if they get the valuation, 0.75% if they get within 5%, 0.5% if they get less than that. A big drop gives them motivation to try to get the best price.
Rosita · 26/09/2018 21:26

I had a local agent sell my house for a similar flat fee to Purple Bricks but they did everything and it was a one to one service. Brilliant.

Lonecatwithkitten · 26/09/2018 23:19

Having spent the last year looking at houses in the 1 to 1.5 M range in exactly the type of village you describe quite frankly there were so houses we walked away from as they were on with an on-line or low end agent who were not used to dealing with high value cash buyers. No when I am looking at a 1.2m property I do not want to be shoe horned into a 20 min property. You have brought no wellies to show us a property with 3 acres in November.
We found the agents who offered the right level service were the Jackson staff stops/ savills/ strut and Parker etc. You maybe severely limiting your buyers by going with an on line agent. We found the right home with one of these agents who gave us plenty of time and had taken the time to learn about the property.

Housemum · 26/09/2018 23:41

I wouldn’t care as a buyer who was selling as I just look on RightMove. But having sold this summer we went through a local agent, but one with a similar fixed price structure. They knew the area, took the right pictures, said the right blurb, we sold. They did the viewings for us (which pushed the price to £300 more than an online only site). We bought from an online agent, the pictures used weren’t great (loads of shots of one room, no real flow or order to them). The owners had to do the viewings. They’d been on the market for ages.

zsazsajuju · 26/09/2018 23:50

I think 1.5% is way above market for commuter belt. 0.5% should be achievable for a local agent

Sugarpiehoneyeye · 27/09/2018 10:59

You should be able to get that fee down to 1% OP.
Personally, I prefer to deal with estate agents face to face, and would be put off, by online dealing, whether I am buying or selling.

ToBeClear · 27/09/2018 11:22

The house we're buying was listed with YOPA another online agent - it's been easy and straightforward with great communication.

FunRequirement · 27/09/2018 11:57

It could put buyers off. I tried to buy a house that was being represented by an online agent, and the woman's son was acting on her behalf. It was torture. Every question we had about her finding a house and knowing what was going to happen with the chain was very awkward. The son sent us angry text messages about how they were offended, that we were rushing her, etc etc. Eventually they took the house off the market after wasting months of our time because she was too emotional about it (I understand, but then I wish they never listed in the first place). After that I vowed never again would I deal with sellers directly. It's ok in the beginning, but as you try to get the sale done, it can be like walking on eggshells to deal directly with buyers/sellers. It's easier to have a middle man who knows how to deal with people. I think you can try purple bricks but something to keep in mind is you're going to be in an awkward position if your buyers aren't reasonable people to talk to.