Estate agent fees

[plantingandpotting]

Can I please ask what percentage you paid/have agreed to pay your estate agents, and if you managed to agree a lower fee, how you arrived there?

I've never sold before, and having lost almost £1k when House Network went under (I know, I know), would like to be better informed when choosing a high St agent.

I've been quoted between 1.25%+VAT to 2%+VAT.

I was quoted 1% plus VAT. Read the contract carefully to work out what happens if you go dual agency. Mine still claimed the 1% fee even if another agent sold it so I would have paid two lots of fees. Luckily I sold before it even went on the market so pay any EA fees (or haven't yet!_)

You should also check whether there is a tie in period which you are committed to when you sign. Near us, all the agents charge the same fee percentage and none have a tie in.

Thank you both.

The EA just came over to value, talking the big talk (valued at 40k more than it's worth, imo 😶) and said he'd see what he could do about getting the commission down (currently 1.25+vat).

We wanted to sell quickly so decided to market with two agents. Both agreed to 1% + VAT (originally 1.5%+VAT and 2%+VAT), o think because they were having some sort of private battle.

It worked out for us because one agent worked really hard and we sold quickly with no issues down the line.

It's best to just ask for what you want - they can always say no

We got our last agent down to 0.9% and the one before that to 1%. Two quite separate parts of the country as well, but fairly standard and easy to sell houses.

Our estate agent asked for 1%+VAT, and we negotiated 0.9%+VAT - I think we could probably have got a bigger discount but we weren't ambitious enough with the discount request!

This is all very helpful, thank you.

It's so hard to enter negotiations blindly - knowing that 1% is pretty standard right now gives me a surer footing.

I just spoke with one agent who scoffed and told me that if my main concern is fee then I might as well go with purple bricks.

This isn't an attack on high st EAs, I know they work hard for that fee...I just struggle to reconcile it being worth upwards of £5k

This isn't an attack on high st EAs, I know they work hard for that fee
I would disagree.
I think they often charge loads of money for next to no work

We were quoted 1.25% + vat but agreed at 1% + vat but this was on the condition that they had only had a 6 week tie in then we would drop the commission. Sold in 24 hours, ea worked very hard and got Sale to completion, I think it would have fallen through if he hadn't been there so worth every penny in my book. I would absolutely use him again.

0.6% +VAT here ..which looks like a bargain compared to others!

0.9% with original agent. Then 0.9% plus vat with the other agent!!

I phoned about 10 agents and it was around 1-1.5% for the majority one agents wanted 1.75% and another wanted 2%.

We chose the 2 agents who didn’t really bull shit us! The amount of crap we were sprouted was unbelievable 🙄

You were right about just asking for what I want. We've gone with the agents we bought the place through 3 years ago, and got them to agree on 1%.

Thank you for the advice!

Every small amount we can save right now is a bonus, given that we're probably going to lose 10s of thousands in the sale (nice one, Brexit).