Viewing 20 posts - 1 through 20 (of 20 total)
  • anyone sold their house themselves?
  • odannyboy
    Free Member

    anyone done it without paying an agent a small fortune for doing next to nothing?
    how easy / hard was it?

    psling
    Free Member

    I have. Still went through my solicitor although the buyer dealt with it themselves at their end. Having said that, he wanted the house and had made me an offer I couldn't refuse [being a money grabbing b'stard 8) ]. It was pretty straightforward if I recall; although I don't believe you are obliged to use a solicitor, most agancies (Land Registry, Stamp Duty, etc.) seem to expect you to. If you are able to market the property yourself, you certainly don't have to use an Estate Agent.

    breatheeasy
    Free Member

    The only house in our estate sitting unsold is the DIY one. Loads of houses around have been sold in the year it's been up for sale.

    He/she is either asking too much, or estate agents are actually (I shudder to say this) working.

    Yes, you may save some money selling yourself but if it takes a couple of months longer when you're still paying the mortgage then maybe that would balance out.

    Sure you'll get many people say they sold their house in 17 seconds. Think it depends on the area.

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    cynic-al
    Free Member

    Unless you have a buyer lined up, how can you market it to the same extent?

    breatheeasy
    Free Member

    I certainly wouldn't want to ring up the person selling the house and leave my telephone number with them – wouldn't like to start receiving "why didn't you buy my house" type calls from a bunny-boiler.

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    My folks sold a couple of houses years ago themselves – simply advertised in the newspaper the same as the estate agents did back then.

    mudshark
    Free Member

    With an agent you're buying into their lost of potential buyers as much as anything. That's the way I looked at it and got a rather optimistic asking price within a week – was when the market was a bit mad though….

    5lab
    Full Member

    key is probably can you get it on rightmove? There appear to be some 'slimline' fixed cost agencies (maybe they're online only) on there these days..

    kimbers
    Full Member

    well we caught an estate agent we were negotiating with in a blatant lie about other people putting offers in (he was off sick one day and hadnt told his coworkers to cover his bullsh!t)

    so we walked away from the purchase, even though we liked the house

    surely with tinternet it cant be that hard to set up your own webpage, gumtree, exchange n mart loads of places

    estate agents=useless **** who overinflate the property market for their own ends and dont have the inerest of the seller or the buyer at heart
    ime

    mudshark
    Free Member

    Well the trick is to align their desires with yours – well they're pretty close anyway as they want a good price and so do you. You don't want agents giving you an overly optimistic value though so I agreed a tiered commission and a 2 week contract.

    Chew
    Free Member

    Depending how quick you want to sell, its probably worth having a go yourself for a few months to see what interest you get marketing it yourself.

    You may get lucky and someone will see it driving around looking at houses in your area, or it may be possible to list it on rightmove for a small fee.

    If that doesnt work afer a couple of months, you can just go down the traditional route, and go with an estate agent.

    jonb
    Free Member

    Wasn't tesco going to launch a DIY version of rightmove. Or maybe it was google. Anyway estate agents do bugger all from a buyers point of view so I would hav eno problem dealing direct. WE ended up that way anyway as it took twice as long to ask a simple question through the estate agent so we'd just knock on the door and ask/phone up.

    kimbers
    Full Member

    the tesco one was scuppered by some legal wossnames

    which is ironic when you need no qualifications to be an estate agent and the industry is 'self-regulated'
    i think the government are too scared to mess with the system as the current set up helps keep house prices artificially high

    i can buy anything else with the click of a mouse button why cant i buy a house like that?

    Midnighthour
    Free Member

    My dad tried to a few years back (before internet house adverts were much around). However he tried to do it dirt cheap/tightwad and had to fall back on an agent, so it cost him more in the end. He thought a 3 line ad in the for sale column of a local paper was enough. :-0

    If say you might pay an agent £2000 for a sale, then I would say myself to budget up to a £1000 on good quality advertising. Decent colour photo and text in paper/web repeated over 2 or 3 weeks and in among the estate agents ads. A nice colour handout to give/send to people. High quality sign outside of your house to look professional. My dad did not see it as still saving say £1000, he saw ANY expenditure as a loss. He needed to get real!

    However, there may be much more accessible ways on the web now, to sell your own house, so the above info might be very out of date.

    odannyboy
    Free Member

    apparently its about 200 quid to put it on rightmove….??true??

    5lab
    Full Member

    I've heard rightmove don't accept independant ads, in order to protect the estate agents who make up the majority of their revenue. That might be wrong though

    freeridenick
    Free Member

    I bought mine without agent. lived 2 doors down – one day saw 2 agents valueing. Went around that night to check they were selling. Made an offer privately, they said abit more – i said fine as still a good deal I thought and hey presto we agreed on price, solicitors/surveyor etc did all the usual bits. Got it for a song i suspect as they were god squad types and pretty naive…

    ART
    Full Member

    Personally I think it's worth a go, and will be considering it as and when we get round to selling our place.

    No doubt I'll get a slap for saying it – but it's marketing, not rocket science – e.g you may not be a Beeny fan but this looks pretty good for starters http://www.tepilo.com/

    Harry_the_Spider
    Full Member

    We did a while ago but we had a buyer lined up.

    marsdenman
    Free Member

    Yep – as Harry though – mates in the local had mates who wanted to move to the village…
    Met over a beer, both got valuations done by estate agents and agreed the price on a handshake, then set the solicitors off doing their thing. They remain great mates (we only moved 200 yards down the road…bigger house, closer to the pub..)

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