Online Estate Agents

[Delectable]

We're prepping to put our flat on the market. Central London location not enough properties for buyers yet some EAs are looking for 2% commission.

Has anyone used Purple Bricks or other online agents to sell a flat in London? How did it go?

We're open to doing our own viewings.

[Title edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

I haven’t used them personally but my neighbour tried selling with Purple Bricks. Had nothing (despite other houses in our immediate area selling within a week, over asking price). He gave up and put it on with a local agent and it sold immediately. As I am nosy,
nosy and looked at the house on right move - the particulars on right move (photos, descriptions etc) were SO much better with the local agent.

lastly, having bought and sold a few times, I find the agents really earn their fee after the sale is agreed - keeping everything on track, liaising with various people, and any negotiations along the way.

Thing is it's not just down to the estate agent is it....you need to be proactive mo matter who you use....maybe we were lucky but our house was staged properly even though it was a pain keeping it looking like a show home....we had some bad experiences with traditional EAs who were trying to encourage us to take lower offers just so they go their cut....so yeah they have an incentive but they don't really care if you get five grand less as it's only fifty quid to them....I dunno....they're all bloody charlatans aren't they at the end of the day.....and don't even get me started on solicitors....oxygen thieves they are as my other half would say....

We tried an online EA a few years ago in London, but from our experience you got a lot more chancers and oddballs that way, there were couple of very low offers, nothing serious and it felt like a waste of our time.
So after a couple of months we switched to a regular EA, they marketed it and it was sold in 2 weeks for asking price, so for us it was worth paying the larger commission.

Haven’t used them as a seller. As a buyer, they were appalling and we ended up just not bothering with a couple of properties we liked because it was all so bloody difficult. Not in London though.

I think they hugely over price.

or are those the prices that sellers set?

Dreadful company and it’s like they are way out of their depth. If they were good EA’s would be out of business.

a good local EA is worth their weight in gold but if you want to try and do yourself then I guess it’s worth a try. Flats are tricky at present to sell.

Not London, but a terrible experience. All very promising when you meet the agent but then:

They overvalued the house and put it a few thousand into the next search price band. We questioned it, they argued strongly they were right so we went with their price. After a few weeks, viewings dwindled. They hadn't been in touch at all about how things were going, so I contacted them, dropped the price by the £20k we'd wanted to put it on for, and £1 into the lower search band. We sold within days.

Pictures were terrible and we were told if we'd wanted decent pictures, we should have hired a professional photographer. Did them ourselves in the end

Description of the house was awful; I rewrote it.

Something went wrong with how our house was listed so if you searched for a property in our village, ours didn't appear. That was never sorted.

We told them the for sale board mustn't go in a particular spot as that was our neighbour's land and he was difficult. That was where it was put.

Our agent went on holiday and there was no one else familiar with our situation or property sale.

We did all the price negotiation ourselves as the agent wasn't contactable other than by email and the buyer wanted a quick decision. That was awkward.

We did all the post offer leg work/coordination ourselves, the agent wasn't interested and her voicemail was always full.

From start to finish, other than when we contacted her to correct the issues listed above (or not), we didn't hear from our agent once our property was listed.

I posted a poor review on Trust Pilot. PB insisted it was untrue and had it removed, claiming we were never clients of theirs. So we provided proof and the review was reinstated. How many poor reviews are removed and then the posters don't bother or have time to provide evidence to get their review reinstated I wonder ..

I haven't used them but they were popular for a while in our town. All of the houses that were for sale with purple bricks were overpriced compared to others. Quite a few had terrible photos but a few looked normal (I wondered if photos might be an add-on). I haven't seen a house advertised by purple bricks for a couple of years now.

Trainto I totally agree with this. The description on the house we ended up buying was very poor. I don’t believe they understand which are the best streets, postcode, catchment area ect. They failed to mention 3 key things the house was in an outstanding catchment area, best post code in the area and very close proximity to station and town centre. Luckily we knew the area as we viewed a similar house round the corner which we lost to a bidding war. I think pb failed to get enough interest on that house due to poor description and also it seems that there are a lot of people put off even viewing with pb. I certainly would not have considered a pb house if I were in a chain! It would be way too stressful.

Depends how serious you are about selling.I know a couple of people who tried, PB neither of them sold, found it difficult to get hold of them, and then of course they still had to pay for the “service”. We used a high street agent, sold quickly, 1% commission.

we tried to view a property recently with Yopa, absolutely abysmal, booked on line, they cancelled didn’t even call to apologise or rearrange.

never found PB any good as a buyer, also so glad that most viewings these days are done by agents, vendor viewings are a real off-put they don't know when to stop talking and you don't get the answers you really need.