Purplebricks pricing

[species5618]

We're selling a relatives house. It's quite a desirable property but needs a lot of updating and has no upstairs bathroom. There's also damp problems.
Purplebricks have valued the house at £70,000 more than 3 local EAs.
£420,000 as opposed to £350,000. There's no other similar houses locally to compare with.
Is it worth going with PB.

As a buyer I found houses being sold through Purple Bricks difficult to deal with.

Partner has property on with PB and they are not being helpful at all. Once it's on with them, you have to pay the fees regardless of if it sells. Not sure I'd use them tbh

Dislike purple bricks intensely. Unless the house was super special I wouldn't even look at it. And people will have a good idea at prices - how do they justify valuing so much higher than everyone else?

I'm also inclined to think that if you've asked 4 'experts' for an estimate of price, and 3 have come in at one price, and one at a totally different price, I'd be assuming that they were overstating the price in order to get our business - as said above, with a business model that means you pay them if they sell it or not

I had three agents valuations plus PB. The other three valued exactly the same, PB was much lower. Plus internet research of houses sold is area showed me the other three were right. And the offers I got matched those too.

The payment payment up-front practice feels a bit "shady" somehow (even though I know it's perfectly legal I hasten to add).
Interestingly all 3 locals based the price on the amount of work that needs doing. The PB agent only talked about the value of the house when done up.
Would a better idea be to price the house at say £390,00 with a local and if it doesn't sell then be prepared to come down. At least we wouldn't have lost the £999 upfront fee.

PB tend to overvalue houses...I can't figure out the logic of it, as you'd think with a fixed fee they'd rather price low to get lots of movement. But maybe it's because they don't actually care if you sell or not - they get their fee regardless.

I would avoid them. We ended up taking it off with them and going to a proper EA who are sooo much better to work with

I find purple bricks massively over value homes. There's one on near me at 150k more than any house on that street has ever sold for.

It would also put me off as a buyer as I know how difficult and slow they can be.

Think they overvalued on the hope you'll go with them and then they have no incentive to be proactive in selling it as they already have the money.

I can only comment from a buyers perspective but I found them excellent to deal with compared to traditional EAs. Much easier to get home reports etc (we're in Scotland) and book in viewings. When the sellers of our house had their first buyer muck them around, they relisted and allowed them to contact previous offers etc for free.

Lots of houses sold in our area via them achieve a higher price vs traditional EAs too (haven't gotten out the habit of my daily zoopla and rightmove checks yet).

Put it on at 390?
If 3 local agents all valued at 350 then i doubt any of them would put it on for 390, it would be a waste of their time
Impression I got with pb is you can name whatever price you want as they get paid even if it doesn't sell.
Almost all of the overpriced properties around here are on with pb or other online agents. Greedy deluded sellers use pb... if you want to sell put it on with one of the locals

Choose an agent who only gets paid when it sells.

A lot of people won't even look at a house for sale with pb. They're not the nicest or easiest to deal with.