Anybody got any views/recommendations/horror stories about any of these?
I’ve got one recommendation (for housenetwork.co.uk) but I’d be keen to hear more.
We’d probably save a few £k and as most people look online these days, especially for a 3 bed semi like ours, I can’t see any drawbacks
I’m a good salesman 🙂 so I’d be happy to show people round….

I think it doesn’t work out much cheaper than a lot of high street places these days that will know the local market better and be able to push adverts locally as well as in the online places.

I’ve been viewing properties with a friend recently and two or three out of those have changed from an online estate agent (purple bricks) to a local one and because you pay upfront with them whether the property sells or not they were out of pocket.

I used housesimple a while ago, £200 deal + vat

They took photos, put on rm, zop etc etc and forwarded caller details etc to me

I set price, did rm ad write up, did viewings etc, something like one set of dreamers, one set of honest gawkers, quite a few people who seemed genuine enough and a fairly easy sell

Only lost 1 viewing due to me full time working and not being able to agree a Time
Life etc experience handy in gauging the people

imo you need it on rm then can hopefully do the rest yourself

Tried HouseSimple – A lot of time wasters ate into my time and costs stacked up quite quickly. I gave up and handed over to local agents.

If you are retired / have lots of time, online is fine. I underestimated the number of people I would have to show round / schedule / manage to actually get a sale.

looked to buy a house off one, long wait on hold, all call handlers busy, eventually got connected, long wait while she tried to find house, arranged viewing, then 4 emails, confirming viewing, then another saying cancelled, then a few more just saying the same, rang them, long wait again on phone, then bored woman, said theres a problem with sale price, with sellers saying house was in probate, i didnt buy it

We looked at Purple Bricks about 18 months ago – apart from the guy being straight out of the cast of “White Gold” his valuation was £10k less than the High Street agents. We sold after agreeing a £2k discount to the purchaser and paid about £3.5k in commission and VAT – end result was we were up by around £5k before anything was knocked off his asking price….

I’m buying a house of someone who’s using purple bricks as their agent. Things are getting quite complicated in the chain now and the poor bloke is spending all his time chasing solicitors.

I’m just sitting back and letting my agent deal with all the flak and get an update from them a couple of times a week. I’m not begrudging them the money at all right now!

Thanks for the advice. We’re gonna get 3 estate agent round and see what they say. One small local, one big local and one national. It’s the thing about managing the chain that swung it. I can’t be arsed with all that on top of relocating 200 miles away and get ourselves new jobs at the same time!

I used HouseNetwork and paid £500 ish to sell my house. All the viewers said they had a great experience and my selling experience was great too – and I’m very picky. I’ve since recommended them to a few friends and they’ve used them with the same experience.

There’s a lot of new online places opening up but I chose HouseNetwork as they had been around the longest of all the online places.

You do have to almost choose your own selling price (fairly easy for most common homes) and obviously show people round your house yourself but saving £1500 I was quite happy doing that!!

We sold 2 homes without any estate agent. In both cases we loaded up a schedule and full details (which we created ourselves) to the online listing site (not as an estate agent but as a host). Calls came straight to our mobiles as that was the numbers we listed and we sold both within 1 week each time. This was starter flats though (1 bedroom and a 2 bedroom) and in Scotland so the home report gives the market valuation. Home report was £500 and the site listing was about £35. Our solicitor dealt with each sale.

Next time we will give that a go at least at first to check interest. What i noticed at the time was that our listing came up with all the estate agents listings in exactly the same way from an internet search. Several friends have been very unimpressed with the actual referrals they have received when using an agent so this has not encouraged us to consider that route first. I suspect it might be region specific though.

I used my local high street agents. They took some very nice photos, marketed it very well and got lots of viewings. It sold within two weeks without me having to do anything. They accompanied all the viewers (some of them came three times!) and dealt with the solicitors re questions and so on. I’ve never even met the eventual buyers and we complete next week.
i think it was around £1500 fixed fee – but nothing to pay until it sells.
Well worth it in my opinion.

I’ve tried to sell two places using different online estate agents. And I wouldn’t do it again. Used scothousemove and purple bricks and in my experience, because they’re not commission based, then they don’t actively make any attempt to sell your house. Currently have a property for sale with purple bricks and we haven’t had a viewing for weeks and heard nothing from the agent. We’ll be going with a proper agent in the next few weeks.

If I was selling again then it’s highly unlikely I would use an online agent.

Last house I sold was via a notice on the gate and my own web site! But that was a bit of a special case. Next to no charges at all (think £150 for professional photos). Agents would have been upwards of 5k commission, maybe closer to 10.

We used Purple Bricks last August. They organised an open house for a Saturday morning, we went out for a couple of hours. Potential buyers got shown around and told offers in for 10am Monday morning. 10am duly rolls around and we got an offer just under the asking price. Purple Bricks man did his magic and got it increased by £5k.
All in all we were very happy with PB and saved a significant chunk of cash as the local estate agents were a lot more and totally bad mouthed PB.
We had an easy short chain though, if we were to move again we’d use them again – if you have an ordinary house in an ordinary area and have researched the price, I don’t think you need the BS of high street agents.

The place we’re selling is in a popular area, no chain as house is empty, on the market for the recommended price, purple bricks just need to pull their finger out their arse.

Agent for me every time. A good one is worth the money imo.

For a really straightforward transaction online may be ok but once you’re dealing with chains or if things start to get dicey a good agent will earn their money.

Sold with housenetwork in less than 4 weeks. Pretty happy with the service and of course the saving!

Sold house using PB last year. Professional photos and we gone to write up the description and best of all we largely bypassed the agent to speak direct with the viewers. £400 all in and got well above asking price. Average local agent wanted nearly £4K

Why anyone would pay high street agent prices is beyond me.

Why anyone would pay high street agent prices is beyond me.

If all goes well there is no point. If things go to shit a good agent is worth their weight.

Also depends how much you want/ are prepared to do yourself. I wanted to do **** all as I had quite enough on my plate so was more than happy to pay for someone to do the donkey work.

Just sold with Tepilo.

£1200. They came and took the photos and floor plans etc. we just had to write up the details.

Unfortunately, our sales negotiator left halfway through the process, so were left on our own to deal with everything, which was a major stress, as they did not reallocate us anyone. However, they gave us 600 off.

DO NOT go with their in house or recommended solicitors. Our buyer went with Tepilo’s convey law, and they were the most useless solicitors I have ever experienced. No one in our chain could speak directly to the solicitor, it had to go through her PA, even though it was quite clear she put you on hold to ask the solicitor a question.

Apart from the solicitors they recommended, we found it much cheaper and generally the viewings were when we were in anyway and saved ourselves a good few £s.

Went with Housenetwork, took our own pics and wrote the description, knew the local market and had 5 estate agents value it. First sale fell thru due to their chain collapsing second sold without problems.
Far better being able to do your own viewings providing you have some sales acumen.

Dealing with local estate agents for our inbetween rental confirmed why they deserve their absolute **** useless reputations.

Used local solicitors for conveying

Also depends how much you want/ are prepared to do yourself. I wanted to do **** all as I had quite enough on my plate so was more than happy to pay for someone to do the donkey work.

This entirely. I didn’t realise how much the agent can do for me until I asked. I’m quite happy to pay them to do the donkey work of chasing the chain….
We’ve agreed a double percentage scale with a good local agent, if they sell for over £335k they get more a higher percentage.
It’ll be on the market by Monday, thanks for the advice all! 🙂

It’s the same with removals. Some of my friends thought we were mad but I paid Pickfords a bit inconsiderable sum of money to turn up, pack the house up for us and move us 500 yards.

They were absolutely brilliant and I’d have happily paid double such a stress they took out of the process.