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?

Don't do it! You will put so many buyers off, especially for a non-standard property. We bought through purple bricks and I would never ever again consider a property listed with them. Our now house stagnated on the market a long time before we decided to view it despite being a very desirable location period property (we were getting desperate as it was peak pandemic purchasing). The whole thing was nightmare start to finnish. During the process our seller had a break down thanks to PB and we completed the day before our mortgage offer expired having already extended it. We were bottom of the chain but PB held up the whole thing by months and it would have collapsed if it weren't for the local estate agent next in the chain. We collected our keys from them and they said "Well if YOU ever have to sell you know not to use Purple Dicks"

Thanks all you’ve sufficiently put me off purple bricks!! Also good to note not to buy with them.

i am also reminded the importance of keeping a chain together which we definitely will need to do and the agents we have gone with did a very good job of doing that for us last time.

We spoke to the agents today (the actual branch manager we originally dealt with) and he has agreed to get the photographer back to get some better photos and assured us we should not drop the price yet but give it a couple more weeks. Our house is a higher value property for the area so we didn’t expect there to be several buyers knocking down the door. DH who was ready to fire them is comforted that they are being collaborative and working hard on it.

hopefully we get some viewings in the next couple of weeks!