To use purple bricks?

[Mercurylines]

We have just put our house on the market with estate agents and have been really unimpressed. We are coming up to the end of our 14 day cancellation period and I’m wondering whether to fire them completely and list it ourselves through purple bricks.

The photos of the house haven’t done it justice. Our house has loads of period features which weren’t photographed. They didn’t include any photos of the hallway on the listing (which I questioned) and so they sent me one they had which was a great shot of our entry way including stained glass door, original wood banister and panelling and dado rails - why wasn’t this included in the first place?? I feel this is a real selling point but perhaps this is just me.

I also raised with them the fact that the pricing was too high (after other valuations) and wanted to ensure we got lots of viewings as it’s the type of house someone will fall in love with when viewing (spacious, high ceilings, sunny). They stuck to their original suggestion and now we’ve had no viewing requests in the first week and they’ve already suggested dropping the price now we have entered the spring market (well they could have foreseen that 20th March was coming from a calendar!!) and also seemed to suggest that it was our insistence that the price is so high!

At this point I feel like I could take better photos on my iPhone and write a description and save ourselves a few thousand pounds. Our EPC is still valid from when we purchased the property and I still have the original floor plan which hasn’t changed. I’m reasonably comfortable dealing with offers/negotiations myself as I an a solicitor myself (not conveyancing though).

We are likely to be in a chain because our house is a family home so buyers will probably have a property to sell. We would also like to buy at the same time but can be somewhat flexible or find a stop gap if necesssry. there is another thread about EAs managing the chain, but I’m still not sure it’s worth it. thoughts?

They do sound awful! Personally, I am put off a house which is with purple bricks as I would rather deal with an agent than the seller direct, and I’d be less likely to view it. If you can afford agents fees, could you change agent?

Thanks for your feedback, I can understand because some people are just odd characters and dealing one-on-one could be a nightmare depending on who the seller is. As a buyer I liked that we were able to book viewings online with purple bricks and could see the times available.
We could go with another agent, I wasn’t impressed with the others that came to value it either so we’ve probably have to get more valuations and see what they’re like…

Yeah many seem to be pretty useless sadly. Best of luck whichever way you decide to go

Do not touch them with a barge pole.

Tried to buy a house through them in 2022. Never, ever again.

Here's a potted history including updated fee structure, fyi:

https://www.getagent.co.uk/blog/online-agents/purplebricks-review

If my dream home came up with them, I would write to the vendor and say: your house is my dream home, but I will not buy through PB. If you decide to use another agent, ask them to contact me.

When we bought 3 yrs ago, we discounted any properties with purple bricks. I'd heard too many horror stories. Obviously not all, but it felt that if the sellers are cutting corners and doing it DIY- what things in the house have been done on the cheap also?

We did view some properties with the owner showing us around though. It always felt a bit awkward. Generally, they'd point out all the things which were new/newish that THEY felt was fantastic, yet dismissed or avoided questions about the things that we felt were important.

Check the T&C's very carefully. A friend used them to try to sell his house. The buyer pulled out last minute, yet he still had to pay purple bricks all the fees. I can't recall the details, but he then went to a regular EA and also had to pay them! He would never use or recommend them at all!

They sound awful but Purple Bricks isn’t the answer.

What you need to do is get yourself a decent EA. Maybe go back to one of the others that gave you a more realistic valuation, at least you know they are more honest than your current EA.

Thanks all. It is good to know that it will put off potential buyers which we definitely don’t want to do. We are going to consider another EA.

Whilst the others had lower valuations one of them really had no idea and eventually asked what we wanted for it then just said “well let’s just give it a go at that price”, and the other basically told us to list it for less than we bought it for even thought another house on the terrace has since sold for more than ours (with one less reception room) and we have done a decent amount of improvements and redecorating whilst he simultaneously nitpicked things and suggested we spend MORE money before it goes up for sale.

We probably need to keep talking to agents unfortunately..

Awful, they have completely disappeared from here. wouldn’t touch them.

I bet it's Foxtons?!

Do NOT go with Purple Bricks or Yopa, awful, awful experiences.

The EA does sound bad.. but it is the worst moment to put a house on the market because everyone who wanted to move has done it to beat the stamp duty change, and new buyers will now wait buy see what happens to prices.

So no viewings might not be all their fault.

I would avoid buying a house sold through Purple Bricks.

No it’s actually a local agent! I think I said before we used them to sell our last house and they did a good job so I’m wondering if we given them a chance. The issue is the cool off period.

Perhaps we just need to be very clear what we want changed in terms of photos and remind them they said they were confident to get viewings at this price point so go and do it and not tell us to drop the price after a week! We were prepared to drop the price at some point though given the other valuations but I think it looks bad so quickly which they should know…

Agree it’s the worst time to sell, unfortunately we have to relocate.

To add to my earlier post. There was a thread yesterday mentioning that EA's earn far more now from the other kick backs than from sales commissions now. So more interested in recommending a broker, mortgage supplier, surveyor etc. Plus, the current stamp duty issue.

Last year, we had several EA around to give us a quote if we sold. 1 guy said 'Its worth about £X' when viewing. An hour later, when presumably back in the office, he emailed to say he thought the market was actually about £200,000 less! Why on earth didn't he have a look what that size/type of house on average was BEFORE viewing??? I don't trust any of them.

Would be very wary of viewing a house with
Purple Bricks. Change your agent. Be more insistent with which photographs and description of your property. I think if you weren’t expecting to be part of a chain and just selling then I would maybe try Purple Bricks. You need an estate agent to hold a chain together.

The problem with Purple Bricks is that you pay them their fee up front. So they have no incentive to get the sale completed as they already have their money.

I wouldn’t personally buy a house from someone selling with Purple Bricks. A good estate agent is worth the money imo and can make the difference in how your chain goes.

And to be honest, I’ve never seen a Purple Bricks listing that I’ve been impressed enough to view. The photos are always a bit rubbish and the descriptions are laughably over the top. I assumed the sellers did those bits because they’re uniformly rubbish, but I read somewhere that actually they’re done by Purple Bricks.

Maybe you could do better than this estate agent with your iPhone and thesaurus. But I doubt you could do better than a good estate agent could. So really, you should find one of those. Scour the local listings and find ones you think have good photos/information and look into those agents.

I had a really good experience with Purple Bricks. Had an asking price offer within 9 days and their after sales were great - I even used their mortgage brokers for my onward purchase. The pictures and virtual walkthrough were great too.

Ah bugger, OP! I was going to suggest you use a local agent! Are you dealing with the people that actually own the estate agency or just people they've employed?

My DM's house was very difficult to sell and we'd used three different large EA, with no joy. We then found a local EA where one of the co-owners did most of the work himself. He always used to say that it was his name on the board so he was determined to make sure it was a good experience!

He sold DM's house within days of listing at, almost at the full asking price. We used him a year later to sell ours, and again, we sold within a couple of days. No tie-in clause, 1% fees, and he was available by text 7 days a week. It was honestly such a fantastic experience. He really knew his stuff and when it came to taking photos, he took extra time to move items out of the rooms that DM had missed/not noticed. The previous EA took a photo with a can of fly spray displayed prominently!

We were chatting to another EA when we were looking at places to buy, he was another local EA owner. I can't say for sure that he would have been as good but he certainly seemed on the ball too.

Do you have any other locally owned EAs where the owners are hands-on? It seemed to make such a difference for us.

I’m glad you had a good experience! It does make me want to stick it out with them a bit longer. My DH is quite set on firing them but we have decided to call the branch tomorrow and air our concerns. He was the one who did the valuation and we have discussed the pricing and marketing with him and I suspect that he has not been overseeing things which is why it is not turning out great.

I think if we do give them a chance we are going to try and negotiate their notice period down so we can still pull the listing if they don’t rectify in 14 days.

its also interesting how some agents manage to achieve a price that others don’t! Does show the difference it can make

I think Purple Bricks probably vary by area but round here I'd just ignore any listing by them, my experience of trying to view houses by their system was useless.

Purple bricks themselves were fine for us. Their firm of solicitors they use (premier property I think??) we had nothing but problems with them and they nearly caused the entire chain to collapse. Use your own local solicitor.

We sold through purple bricks. It meant we paid a tenth of the price of an estate agent and we got the photos/ description/ price etc. that we wanted and I could give potential buyers what no estate agent can give and that’s an hours viewing on a Saturday booked at short notice the previous day.

So selling yes, absolutely brilliant and quick because we did it all ourselves.

The process after that however was awful. They did nothing for us and there was no useful go between between solicitors buyers and sellers. It could have all fallen through because no one was managing it.

We sold with no chain, but if I was in a chain and it could mean I might miss out on a house I want to buy I would absolutely not use purple bricks.

I think the point people sometimes fail to recognise when appointing PB is that the role of an EA is not just to advertise the property or organise viewings but to make sure the chain gets to completion.

In some ways selling the house is the easy part (not always). Getting it to completion over the next few months without the sale falling apart is harder and a good EA has an important part to play in keeping the chain together when issues arise.

Exactly! A good EA will be skilled at sorting out all the issues. They can communicate with the other parties, suggest solutions, and are much better at this than solicitors who just address legal issues.

The EA is the only professional in conveyancing who doesn’t get paid if it all falls through. So the incentive is there. Unlike for PB and similar who just take the fee for providing a shop window. They get their fee, no skin off their nose if it all fails.

And PB leaves the buyer at the mercy of numpty / inexperienced vendors, probably using PB’s terrible legal and other services.

I like the idea of Purple Bricks but agree with comments on here (just going by feedback I've seen, never dealt with them myself).

I wish there was some kind of middle ground, as I know for a fact I could sell my house better than any EA. I know it's quirks and positives, things that won't be obvious to somebody who spends 10 minutes walking round. I know everything about the local schools and area. I can do a good write up, without using flowery, cringe words and can also spell. I can take photos at the best time of the day, without having to photoshop them. I'll label photos correctly, put them in the right order and won't have duplicates, close ups of vases or vast amounts of ceiling in them. I probably wouldn't have as much clout when it comes to maintaining the chain though, but to be fair, no agent I've ever used has been particularly good at that either.

In my area none of the EAs are amazing and most are totally incompetent. Their Rightmove listings make me cringe and I can usually tell which agent a house is on with before I've even checked. I feel your pain as I hate the thought of paying someone thousands for something I could mostly do better myself.