Would it be madness in the current climate to try and sell your house yourself?

[slackrunner]

We really need to sell our house in 2009 (dd has CP and we have a tall, thin townhouse on 3 levels - how practical ), however I'm not holding my breath.

The estate agents in our area really don't do it for me - far too much chunky cord and tweed jacket wearing and not enough selling graft going on IMO. Plus they've quoted us 2% commission!

However, I realise at the moment you need as much coverage as you can get for selling. Anyone got any positive stories of selling their house themselves, especially in the current dire straits ?

bumpety bump - I know it's a v.dull question, but we really are desparate to sell

No I think if you price it right it will sell and keep in mind whatever % you have to knock off yours, you knock the same if not more off the one you are buying.
I'd get it on the market asap and look at what houses were selling in your street for in 2006 and use that as a starting price whatever the agents tell you.
A house we looked at in March 2007 sold very recently for 2004 prices, which as I say is fine providing you pass the same drop onto the next people.

i haven't ever sold a house on market but common sense would say either make it cheap or increase agent's commission. how confident are you that people want to buy it?

Sorry to answer the question about the agents, I think a trained chimp could do a better job, contact right move and get it on there, make yourself a board and get some nice pictures in the local rag once every few weeks, I bet that doesn't cost 2%. No way would I use an agent again, there offices are like deserts anyway at the moment and are they on the phones drumming up business, no they are starring out of the window.

slackrunner
I tried to book an appt. to see a house through agents 3 weeks ago. They still haven't come back to me. I'm a buyer without a chain etc! Imagine if that was your house you were trying to sell!

I'd try and sell it yourself.

I would.

We are chain free buyers with a large deposit and are looking to buy right now. Estate agents have been soooo slack about returning our calls and arranging viewings.

Caveat - I would only do it if you are available at lots of different times during the week to conduct viewings. We are getting a bit pissed off with trying to arrange viewings, only to hear that the vendor can only accommodate us between 10.42 and 10.57 on the second saturday of the month.

Thanks everyone. I didn't realise that we could sell through Rightmove ourselves, I will investigate now.

LOL at 'at a trained chimp could do a better job'...my sentiments exactly. We've had similar estate agent experiences ourselves recently; we've had to wait 4 weeks to see two houses we're interested in . Not sure whether it's the agents or the vendors dragging their feet, but still....

hi slack runner. fingers crossed for you selling first. i hate hate HATE estate agents with a passion but one thing they do do do is keep things going... from our experience of selling last year (2008!) they got straight on the case when it looked like we were losing our buyers and at the end of the day, they pulled out the stops with getting new people round and we had another offer within a matter of days. that said i was such an annoying customer (i phoned him every day to check how things were progressing) i reckon he worked hard just to get shot of me!

2% in this market is ludricous though, as a guide we got ours down to 0.75

Thanks WP. 0.75% - that's good going - just goes to show it's worth negotiating. 2% is taking the total and utter piss, I suspect they quoted us that as our house isn't a great country pile and they wouldn't want to lower themselves to have to put it on their books. Bellends

I shall particularly enjoy meeting estate agents at the job centre

... or at the second hand car dealership

I'm considering this too - we've had our house on the market since August with an estate agent who promised to do all viewings themselves (we have already moved out so now live 90 miles away). So far they've sent us one couple who haven't even started marketing their house yet (twice) and one couple who actually want a new build (our does need a little work doing ) AND I've had to drive all the way over to do both viewings because the agents 'weren't available'...

Maybe we should just all state where we're trying to sell, just in case anyone's interetsed?

Does anyone know any good websites for private selling?

ditzzy
Often the reason why the agents aren't available is because they've cut back on staff so ruthlessly, that they only have one person to man the office, do the viewings and do the estimates. And I think its going to get worse this year as so many offices will be closing down. I'd definitely try and sell it yourself.

Maybe we should have a new MN For Sale Board for houses (sort of joking/ sort of serious)?! After all, we're all likely to be selling family sized homes.

Yep - our 2% quote was for us to do the vgiewings ourselves. Unbelievavble! Beggars belief. Estate agent: 'Hmmmm....I will charge you an inordinate amount of money to do some really quite pants marketing of your house, and provide you with nothing else mind.'

If you are available to do viewings, I don't see why not.

The biggest problem would be in deciding what price to market it at. Look here and try to see what similar houses have sold for:
www.nethouseprices.com

Bear in mind that prices have dropped dramatically over the past year and are still falling. So price accordingly, bearing in mind that you should be able to negotiate a similar discount off your next home.

Thanks for that site Upwind.

I've just seen the Beeb site this morning - they've dropped again, now down to Aug 2004 prices .

2004 was still pretty damn steep though, seriously whatever you decide do it quickly this really isn't going to recover any time soon.

Agree OHB - and it's reflected across all of the market so a drop in ours is also a drop in the house that we end up buying. No point getting too flapped about prices.

I sold my house using www.thelittlehousecompany.co.uk/ in the summer of 2005. I also had it on with a local estate agent.

My buyer was drawn to my property because I'd highlighted its suitability for extension, and they were looking for a "project", which the estate agent hadn't highlighted. Ironically they had been looking at another property with my agent, but saw mine when looking online and preferred it. The agent hadn't given them the details of my house - so they lost out on the commission.

I found it much easier talking direct to my buyer during the process, and the only hitches in our chain were caused by estate agents further down not communicating exchange and completion dates properly.

Looking at the little house company now... thanks! I won't say anything else about our agents because once I get started it would end up pages long.

Seems obvious that when there's other people on the thread saying they're chain-free buyers having trouble getting agents to co-operate that we have to say something. Just in case anyone's interested in a 4 bed detached in South Derbyshire...

It has been never easy to sell your house yourself and in the current climate. It always asks some help like choosing a wise online estate agents who can make things easy for you or it will be not so easy to go with yourself. Here one can check the things go in a right way or not. ukpb.co.uk/

Just to say I have ben though a private sale and so has my parents and the reall downside is that point in which most house sales reach when you fall out about something you don't have any buffer
And when we sold 2008 - pretty quiet as well we got them to drop their fee after a while
but saying that as almost everyone uses rightmove provided you can get it on that -which you can with some of the private sale site I can't see why not try it