Purple Bricks

[staycaysandvacays]

Has anyone use PB when selling? If so, how was your experience?

Considering using them as listing with them would be c. £2k (up front) rather than about £5k at the point we sell with a local estate agent.

I wouldn't buy or sell a house through PB as they are total rubbish. Like any service or trade you pay up front, they have no incentive to do a good job.

People think that it's just a case of the estate agent advertising your house on Rightmove, doing a few viewings and that's that, but a good estate agent will drive the whole process, vet the buyers and push the sale through. I was quite surprised at how much work they did after we we agreed a sale. We had three buyers in a bidding war for a probate property we were selling, and ended up getting way in excess of the asking price. We wouldn't have got this with PB. You can negotiate with an estate agent and get fees as low as 1% or up to about 3% depending on type of house.

We've bought and sold (domestically) 6 times in 37 years and twice business premises. Believe me we've received some shockingly bad service from high street estate agents along the way, and paid a lot for the privilege, so PB holds no fear for us 😄.

The overriding answer is no. We're going to get a few local agents in and try to negotiate the best fee and then go with them

Definitely the right decision to go with a traditional estate agent rather than Purple Bricks. Wish you all the best.

As a buyer I would strongly advise you to avoid Purplebricks purchase at all costs. My experience with them has been absolutely miserable. Incompetence of their staff not reading emails, not responding and faulty phone lines which lasted weeks. Also there are many hidden small prints that stop you abandoning the sale when you discover a reason to walk away. Lastly even an auction or buyitnow purchase doesn't mean that the vendor is in a chain which too can collapse. It was an entirely awful experience and avoid them completely.

I would never use them. My NDN tried TWICE to sell through PB and paid £2k both times. First time they had no luck at all and paused putting it for sale. IIRC, they could pause the sale for a year / X months. However, when they tried to re-start the process of selling the house again, they had gone over that time frame without realising and had to fork out another £2k to relist the house all over again.

It ended up falling through the day before exchange anyway. So £4k down the pan to not have sold their house.

I have just sold with a popular agent in the area; I wasted 10 months with another agent, swapped to this popular agent and they sold it within 2 weeks. See which agents have most sold signs near you and give them a call; they likely have a big pool of people who want a house in your area.

I guess there’s a reason why estate agents haven’t gone the way of physical travel agents and betting shops over the last 25 years. They still offer a service that can’t be replicated online.