How common is it to be in contact with your seller / buyer directly?

[LemonChiffon]

I've seen a couple of posts on MN where people have been able to text / call their seller or buyer directly during the conveyancing process. I was wondering how common that was? In our house move chain, I have no contact with any of the parties, it is all through the solicitors or estate agents. Being able to contact them directly would be very useful! But I imagine there would be downsides to it too.

What's your experience?

When we moved our buyer knocked on our door and wanted to speak to us directly. I was not at all happy about it, but didn't let on to the buyer.

She said she had been round five times before to see if we were in and we nicknamed her stalker. She was agro all the way through. If we sell again I will get the agents to tell the buyer that we do not want direct contact.

Yes, that's the risk, that you get someone really unpleasant and bullying, in which case you don't want direct contact!

With a group of reasonable people I would think being in touch directly could hugely speed things up.

It isn't common and in most circumstances I'd say it was advisable not to be - it can be very stressful and emotive and being a step removed and communicating via the EA or solicitors is preferable.

We’ve moved five times and never been in contact with our buyers or sellers. It’s just not a good idea I think, as it can lead to expectations that can’t be met. We’ve been in contact with buyers after the sale to answer questions they have about the house though, when the deal is done and dusted!

We had lovely vendors who showed us round on our second viewing and after we made the offer I put a card through the door thanking them for their time and our contact details.

In the end we cut out the EA completely (they were furious). We were all reasonable, sensible people, motivated to moving so it all worked out for us, but I can understand your hesitation.

We were all reasonable, sensible people

Something which is terrifically unusual!

Most people are reasonable, sensible people but it's a stressful process.

I have always been in touch with both buyers and sellers! That way we negotiated what was going to be left, bits of furniture to be sold etc. Its always been very amicable and quicker than leaving everything to the EA.

There's something about buying/selling property that brings out the worst in some people, and turns someone who is ordinarily a reasonable sensible person in to an irrational CF!

We’ve bought and sold five times in the last 15 or so years and been in touch with either buyer or seller three times.

Some people don’t like it because after all, they’re paying their estate agent a huge amount of money to do this.

I’ve had a buyer cutout the estate agent once and it was brilliant- they couldn’t try any of their usual tricks. But he was very reasonable. As a seller I’m not sure I would want to deal with any old member of the public

I was in contact with our buyer when we sold our first home, as we did the viewing. It was fine until the completion was delayed, through no fault of our own, so I wouldn't do it again. When we bought our next home we didn't have direct contact with the seller and I much preferred going through the agent and solicitor.

I am buying a property which is being sold via PurpleBricks so I have the ability to message the seller directly on their platform. We have been doing this throughout the sale to make sure we are both on track and to chase solicitors/estate agent where needed.

I have found it absolutely brilliant as my solicitors would have been so slow to do anything had I not known what was happening on the other side. We also negotiated a lower price after the survey directly and she let me know what furniture she was leaving/taking so I would know in advance of the Black Friday sales - winner!

We have often exchanged contact details as it's much quicker to cut out the (usually useless) estate agent when you have questions or need further details.

Buyers via EA turned up to view and loved our terraced house. They went down the pub to think about it. Later they invited me to join them while we agreed a price - I wasn't drinking! - the asking price. We were all very happy with the agreement. Allowed them in a couple of other times so they could measure up stuff.

A friend of mine contacted the seller directly because they had string suspicious that the EA was lying about the sellers intentions to force them to accept a lower price for their own house (same EA handling both sales).

The EA was lying as it turned out and wasn’t pleased that they had been in contact.

We going through private sale after 1st sale fallen through.

Its lovely skip estate agents
Its been trickier to discuss money ie offer then after survey.

I think if we had been going via estate agent given current market we would pushed more money off.

I think its speeded up the process.

We lucky our sellers nice person freind.of a freind and no.chain.

Saw 1 house offered and refused and seller was a nightmare i would have hated to deal with him direct and fully expected him to play games. Its just sold so pity the buyers.

Freind recently lomg chain and when you are the one that delays the chain can create bad feeling so maybe direct contact bad thing if sale is delayed or fails to run smoothly.

The house we lost sellers rushed estate agents to pressure us.
Mortgage took a while.
Then 6 weeks later they changed their mind.

Estate agents fuming
We were very upset.
They seems so nice at viewing.

Yes, yes!

In my experience estate agents and solicitors love to feed the line. “Oh the vendor is holding things up etc” the seller wants an indemnity policy on...” .

When the real reason if more like “oh we forgot” “ we had other deadlines” “the seller/bank doesn’t want the indemnity, I just want a bonus”

We were only around the corner from our buyers, so often saw them in person. Having each other's numbers came in handy when they were baffled by a few things that they couldn't work out, like the heating controller, and later on when a delivery somehow defaulted to our old address.

No contact with our vendors. We get a lot of letters from debt collectors, as well as traffic fines from other countries because they're too useless to even change their car's registered address. I know where they work, though.

We sold our last house through House Network because I wanted to conduct viewings myself and exchange contact details with buyers (and it was a hellnof a lot cheaper).

All the official stuff like making/accepting offers etc was done through the agents but it was useful to drop the odd text to each other.

Best bit: when our buyers' agent told our solicitor out of the blue that if we didn't exchange contracts within 24 hours, the buyer was pulling out, I texted the buyer directly to check whether this was true and it was, as suspected, utter bullshit so we could confidently call her bluff. I realised the next day was the end of the quarter and their agent was then going on holiday so she was probably desperately trying to meet her targets.

We were in regular contact with our vendors and it made life so much easier than having to go through solicitors/estate agents. We took their post round ever month for a year or so too. They were nice, reasonable people. We didn’t have anything to do with our buyers really, they had our numbers but wanted to deal though the solicitors.

We were shown round our house by seller and he was lovely, immediately let us know he was desperate enough to take offers, let us unload stuff early on moving day and we ended up keeping his cat. On the negative side he didn't clear out all his rubbish and we've had bailiffs round for him since, but we knew he had health and money problems, so not unexpected and having met him far more understandable.

I had no contact with our buyer except through agents and solicitors, but he was pushy and unpleasant and it was better to keep it that way.

My mum had an amazing chain, they've all kept in touch and are planning to do drinks at Christmas!

I always try to get direct contact details when selling or buying (once the price has been agreed - I like the estate agent to do the haggling part!).

It speeds things up, because you're not waiting for an intermediary to get round to asking questions and passing on answers. Plus - while our estate agents haven't been as bad as some I've heard of - they've often been slow or inaccurate.

I've had delays and misunderstandings that could have dragged on forever but were solved with a simple text.

Estate agents often don't like to give you the personal contact details - I'm guessing they want to stay in control, and also worry about people arguing and falling out. But I insist if I have to.

However, our buyers and sellers have always been nice people. (If they weren't then I would genuinely consider going back on the market and finding one who was... the chances are high that a dodgy one will mess you around in the end anyway.) Plus I make a huge conscious effort to be polite and obliging and bend over backwards to be helpful.

I reckon that people are less likely to pull out or mess around if they have a personal relationship with you.

We instructed the EA to do all viewings and want out each time. We only knew the surname of the buyer and never had contact or met him. Everything was dine through EA and solicitors. It suited us to see it as a business deal with specialists acting for us. Kept the emotion out of it.

I am a FTB (still ongoing) - we have our sellers number but only called her once to arrange a viewing. I wouldn't want to call her directly unless required, she's an elderly woman and I would worry she thinks we are being impatient or pushing her.