Selling without using an Estate Agent - pros and cons

[EmmaGrundyForPM]

Hi, we are thinking about selling our house and we were planning to use an Estate Agent. However, we are aware of someone who is looking to buy in our area and have been in touch with them. It might all come to nothing, but if they (or anyone else) are interested, we were wondering if we needed to use an Estate Agent. Has anyone sold privately, and what are the benefits (apart from saving money?). We've had our house valued by two different agents so we are clear about what sort of figure we would be looking for.

Is it incredibly stressful not to use an EA? Any advice would be very welcome. Thanks

Mine dealt with two shit conveyancers and a VERY pushy buyer very well. I’d genuinely not have coped with having to speak to my buyer directly. It took ages as well (due to shit solicitors) so well worth their 1% fee!

In a slow market, a private buyer can be an advantage because they may be more committed and you save the EA fee. In a hot market, it's a risk to not expose your property to the market, so your private buyer should expect to pay a premium for not having to compete with other buyers.

My experience of EAs and how helpful they are is very mixed. I think sometimes not having one can be an advantage.

I resent the money spent on Estate agents for the little work they do, that's if your house is an average one, not in the realms of Knight Frank etc. (flashy brochures, drone photography) If you are savvy I should think you can use social media to advertise.
Spend money on solicitors, surveys etc, the big stuff you cant easily do yourself.
You can advertise privately, opposite neighbour made his own sign, put it up in the front garden with mobile number on and did his own viewings. and he sold easily, B road fair amount of traffic goes past.

We sold ours privately but engaged an EA on a much reduced fee to deal with the buyers ESA, solicitors etc. Worth every penny to me.

@noscoobydoodle

We sold ours privately but engaged an EA on a much reduced fee to deal with the buyers ESA, solicitors etc. Worth every penny to me.

I was wondering about that approach.

We wouldn't be looking to not use an EA if it wasn't for the fact that we are aware of a potential private buyer. If that doesn't go anywhere then we will go down the conventional route. I'm just very reluctant to pay out £8k to an agent if we are able to do a private sale.

I used to work as a paralegal conveyancer and any chain that involved a private sale was a nightmare. The solicitors rely heavily on the estate agents to communicate through the chain and move things along because they are only allowed to speak to the solicitors on either side of their own transaction. Solicitors are also not good at chasing themselves as they have a huge amount of transactions happening at any one time. There just isn't time for them to get involved with chasing. The estate agent earns every single penny of their fee after the property is under offer. All the stuff they do beforehand and advertising etc, yes you could do yourself (although they can push a buyer to pay more than you can unless you're very good at negotiating), but trust me when I say the sales progression they do for you is worth every penny (people have no idea how many sales fall almost fall through and how much the agent can do to keep those sales together with their ability to talk to the buyer/seller and other agents in the chain!)

Honestly. If you think you can do it on your own then just do it. EA’s are still in business for reason.

You will have to manage all the viewings and the time wasters. There are tons of them. If you are in an area where houses are selling quickly and most people think they are you will be inundated with the nosey, as well as the serious buyers. We live in a desirable area (!) and our opposite neighbours were selling. We had a large number of drive bys but they said the EA sorted out the serious buyers from the plain curious.

They also asked the potential buyers about their personal circumstances ie. is your own house on the market and then called the EA selling it. Some people are such liars and will say any old flannel to get a viewing.

If you think you can manage all of that then go ahead. For us we found the EA most useful selling our last house after the sale had been agreed. The buyer was messing around, kept drip feeding what they wanted to do next and the EA sorted all of this for us.

When we sold our last house one buyer wanted his whole family to visit (all 12 of them) and another claimed to be a cash buyer but wasn’t. All of that was dealt with by the agent.

Btw - I am definitely not a EA!

@Franklin12 as I said, we were planning to use an EA so not sure why you think we would be managing multiple viewers and time wasters?

I was asking about ONE specific potential (cash) buyer who has approached us. If nothing comes of that, then we will put the house on the market with an EA. As I said in my previous post.

Depends on what sort of person the buyers are but I reckon it could work if both parties are motivated and realistic. My agents were utterly shit when I sold my house. Flashy, talked the talk and pushed me to put it on for a high price. When the open day resulted in no offers, they pushed me really hard to drop the price just four weeks after it had gone to market. It was honestly so depressing and it took 6 months to get it sold. The one small upside was that my new employer was paying a relocation fee so I was reimbursed for the estate agent’s fee. Thank god or I would have been so gutted as they were so shit.

@Monkeysocks38 thanks. The person who we may (or probably won't) sell to privately isn't in a chain as they are a cash buyer. There will almost certainly be an EA that we will buy through. It is more a question of - is it worth the hassle of dealing with it ourselves to save a few thousand on the EA fee. If we did sell privately, I think the suggestion from someone above re engaging an EA to do some of the work at a reduced fee is an interesting one. If we have "sourced" a cash buyer and there has been no marketing involved, what could an EA do for us? Genuine question, not trying to be snide.

How will you know that there isn't somebody out there that would pay more than your existing potential buyer?

I have sold a parcel of land without an estate agent which was part of my late parent’s property. Absolutely no chain. Both parties were extremely surprised at how slow and laborious the process was.

I understand why you would be tempted to not use an EA. It looks simple. But you will still be in a chain as you will presumably have an onward purchase.

I’m not a fan of EAs but in fairness they do far more than viewings on a property. That’s the easy bit. The most difficult and important is holding the chain together in a timely manner.

If you are selling and moving into rental and are happy to do all the liaison and engage directly with any of the difficulties that may arise during your sale ok you could risk it. Otherwise personally I would use the agent.

A good EA will keep the chain moving by ensuring things happen when they are supposed to - that the buyers funding checks out, surveys are booked and take place, any post-survey negotiation, making sure paperwork has been filled out and sent to the solicitor, making sure the solicitor has received and looked at it (which sounds outlandish but most conveyancers are so busy things frequently get lost at the bottom of piles), chasing responses to outstanding enquiries and providing a buffer between you and your buyer if things get fraught. If your buyer needs to be told politely to piss off with a last minute reduction a good EA will find the words to do this whilst also persuading them not to walk away. They’ll also make sure you’re moving at the same pace as the rest of the chain. It’s no good you being ready to go if the top of the chain is still dithering over survey results and hasn’t got a mortgage offer.

@Cloverforever

How will you know that there isn't somebody out there that would pay more than your existing potential buyer?

yes, that's one of my worries. It's no good saving a few thousand on the EA fees if the EA could get us £15k more.

When we last sold, we had a really bad experience with our buyers and the EA wasn't helpful. That's probably colouring our judgement.

Estate agents can smooth a lot of ruffled feathers after the sale is agreed. There's real benefits with not having to talk to your buyers directly if, for example, something showed up in the searches or survey and there needed to be a negotiation about the price of the property the estate agents would be able to act as a go between.

I think going without an agent is fine if everything is straightforward but they are so useful if things get messy for any reason. They help keep the process a business transaction.

For us the EA does the chasing, the negotiating and the direct liaison with the buyers and their solicitors. I prefer to get a sanitized conversation with an EA than a frazzled buyer. Don't underestimate how stressful and heated buying and selling can be! We also have our EA on standby to get a new buyer in if our buyer pulls out (which happened on our last sale, and they had resold it the same week). We agreed a post-sales fee that do the chasing up for us, and will pay a larger fee if they have to put it back on the market. This is a local estate agent rather than a big nationwide chain, we have sold with them before a couple of times and we really rate them, and they have been flexible with us about the fee, so it's definitely worth the money for us.