Purple Bricks on Trust Pilot

[GimmieTheCoffeeAndNooneDies]

Can I trust the reviews for Purple Bricks on Trust Pilot?

I was looking at them on Friday, and there was a whole load of 5 star reviews all added within a couple of hours of each other. Lots of common phrases, and all written the same style, ie fluent but as if English wasn't their first language.

What do other people think?

Every experience I've had with them has been awful.

Viewing. Buying and selling was all awful with them.

Houses are always up for sale much longer round my area with them

I would recommend eSale, we exchanged last week, complete on Wednesday, they have a great sales progression team that keeps tabs on the buyers, sellers and conveyancing.

Note, for most online estate agents you won't get a great blurb written about your property, because they dont know the house or the area, honestly you're better of writing it yourself (and getting them to do the photos). We did, here was my property if you're interested.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68459626.html

Ben

@GimmieTheCoffeeAndNooneDies.....I've written a few posts lately on purplebricks. We brought our current house with them and have just sold it through them too. We move on wednesday. Tbh the agent for them has been great. Completely faultless. Honestly not a bad word to say about him. I've heard bad things about their conveyance company so avoid them....even their EA said don't use them!

I suppose it's an area thing or who the EA is you get. If you get a good on like we did then its brilliant. If it's a bad one then I'm sure you'll know soon enough. I suppose many mainstram EAs are like that. The only difference is you pay a 1 off fee for PB but a 1.5% commission for another so PB could save you a lot of money.

We've used purple bricks and haven't had any problems at all. We were on with high street agents and had 2 viewings over 16 weeks. Went on with purple bricks and sold in 5 weeks. With three offers.

Looking at buying, rather than selling, so wouldn't have any control over the conveyer they used. Would also rather not deal directly with the vendor so things don't get too personal. Purple Bricks has a sort of diy vibe about it.

Yep we had to put offers into vendor and it got very personal. Especially worse if you have to pull out like we did!

I bought our current house with them. Again no problems. I did speak direct to the vendors but I also spoke to estate agent a few times. The estate agent contacted me on completion day and answered any questions throughout the process. It sounds like you would prefer a high street agent so just go with your instinct.

Depends largely on the local agent I think.

Suspect good if a straightforward sale of a standard(ish) property in an area with a good turnaround

Not so good if house more niche and/or expensive for area

My last purchase/sale I sold with emoov and bought through purple bricks, was overall pretty happy. It took us a while to sell but I think that was more the market slowing down and us being a bit over-ambitious with the price initially than anything to do with the marketing.

The only elements I wasn't entirely happy with were that emoov massively over estimated the recommended initial asking price (so e.g. local estate agent recommended putting on at £275k, emoov said £350k based on wild comparisons with completely different local properties ), but this was easily got around by some research of our own on zoopla and speaking to some local agents.

The bit that was a bit more of a problem was that our buyers had major gripes with the 'after offer/sales' part of the service and we were silly enough to give them our personal mobile numbers so they kept calling us rather than going via the EA and solicitors. To be fair though they were FTBs and a bit needy/unfamiliar with the process so this probably magnified the issue but the service/communications wasn't amazing (although I've had equally poor service from 'proper' agents so not necessarily down to the online agent aspect). I had no issue at all with the purchase through PB, they were quite hands-off but I don't mind that as everything was with solicitors by then anyway.

I do think the online agents are miles ahead with regard to their websites/back end, I love being able directly to see how many views and click throughs you are getting, and both as seller and buyer it's very convenient to be able to book viewings online rather than having to go back and forward with phone calls. I didn't mind doing my own viewings nor do I mind being shown around by the owner (I know some people object, but you can pay PB to do it for you if so). And for me the money you save on commission is definitely ample compensation for any inconvenience through not having a 'proper' agent. But then again I was selling/buying within a target demographic where everyone does everything online and through right move etc so not having an ad in the paper or an agents window didn't really bother me. And the property was very 'bog standard' and didn't need/wasn't up for much upselling. If you are looking to sell perhaps to someone more used to the traditional model or it's a more unusual property then that's different of course.

We recently decided to sell through PurpleBricks despite seeing a lot of negative reviews, and overall I've been pretty pleased with it so far. We arranged viewings over a weekend and actually sold on a Sunday evening, which would never have happened with a traditional estate agent. The local agent was helping us out all weekend with offers (they are self-employed so usually work longer hours), and he seemed to know the area really well so all in all I think it was a good decision as we sold within 2 days. I liked being in control of viewings and offers without all the communication coming through an EA.

The main drawback was the bit between accepting the offer and starting the conveyancing - the communication seemed to die a little bit, so I had to chase to make sure they had submitted their lawyers details. However, in light of saving nearly £2k in fees, I will take that on the chin.

In comparison, we are buying with a very reputable (and expensive) high street EA, and I couldnt have been more disgusted with the service I received. No follow up call to either viewing, and I had to chase up arranging the 2nd viewing as they needed to get back to me about the vendors availability. We then decided to put in an offer, and the EA claimed that he needed to see my wage slip before he would pass on the offer - WTF! I was so annoyed we nearly stopped the whole process.

We eventually had an offer accepted, but they haven't been in touch once to see what progress we are making on the purchase - if I was the vendors, I would be fuming at spending a huge chunk of money for a worse service than an online EA is providing - shocking really.

The house we are buying is through purple bricks and our sellers are really happy with the service. Everything was done on their app, you can choose viewing times, make offers and message the seller directly once you have viewed the property. Its so much quicker to ask sellers questions direct rather than wait for estate agents. As soon as an offer is made they are in touch asking for solicitors details, it's all been very straightforward

If it helps....

The house opposite DS had a Purple Bricks sign appear last month. It took a whole 2 and a half weeks for the property to appear on either its own site or rightmove.
The photos are truly truly awful, and as much as I realise you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear I have no clue why they think including photos like this is helpful. As far as I know there hasn't been any interest whatsoever.