Thinking of using online estate agents to sell our house. For a ~£600 fee its a alot cheaper than the % of sale price ( min £1400) that local estate agents charge. I’m not really sure what i get for the extra £800 from a local estate agent aside from a picture going in the shop window. Has anyone got any experience of online estate agents (or selling the house yourself) and could recommend any online agents to use (not purple bricks though as they dont cover our area)

cheers

Rich

We’ve just used move & save. If you’re happy doing your own viewings it ticks the box. I think so long as you’re on rightmove, you’re not going to get anymore exposure in a shop window.

Thats what i’m thinking. I read somewhere that 90 odd percent of house sales came from the internet sites.

Just looked and unfortunately, Move and save dont cover South Wales.

I’d give it a go personally, we’re house hunting, Estate Agents are a massive pain in the arse, I’d rather deal with a faceless website than suffer another bullshit performance to build a sense a of panic buying – **** ’em.

our house is currently with an estate agent who for the last 5 months has been absolutely woeful. they’ve found us 3 viewers in that time, one of which was a no-show and the other they scared off. add the one who was also interested but they put her off making a viewing appointment as she hadn’t got her inheritance yet.
they’re getting fired at the end of the month. our mortgage broker has a friend who is an online agent with lower fees so we’ll most likely give him a chance.

I was undecided whether to sign up with an online or local estate agent. House Simple sounded really good and was more than £2k cheaper but I chickened out and signed up with a local estate agent just over a week ago. There was talk of using drone photography to get some good snaps … what actually happened was a sales manager turned up and took a few photos. The draft sales particulars arrived in the post: the directions are wrong, the description is poorly written and misses out key info and the photos are just dire. I’m having to do everything myself (take photos, write copy, do viewings) because the agent can’t be trusted to do a decent job. Never. Again.

Depends on the agents and the area.

We move next week and looked at a few houses that were with online only agents and would say the following:

You think you’re normal, many people probably don’t. At least tidy up your smalls if you’re going to show a stranger round your house.

You think your house is the best in the area, it probably isn’t. “Potential to extend” isn’t such a good feature that it adds £10k over the price of every other house on the street that already has an extension. Ditto the vast amount of decorating and “little jobs” to do aren’t good things.

If houses are on rightmove it’s because agents haven’t been able to sell them any other way. It costs them a fair bit to list on there apparently so it’s a last resort. The house we’re buying hadn’t even made it to their window yet. Likewise we’re letting out our flat rather than sell it to speed things up and the letting agent had a tenant in mind before they’d even done the advert (and they took it).

I’d hazard a guess this is mostly because those that are on with online agents are after as much money as possible, and haven’t had the benefit of someone come round and tell them to tidy up and do all those little decorating jobs.

Basically if I was a buyer I’d be wary of anything on rightmove etc with an online agency as they were almost all overpriced.

The only upside was getting viewings in the evenings was dead easy.

The draft sales particulars arrived in the post: the directions are wrong, the description is poorly written and misses out key info and the photos are just dire. I’m having to do everything myself (take photos, write copy, do viewings) because the agent can’t be trusted to do a decent job. Never. Again.

we had similar issues. poor photos…they refused to take a picture of the master bedroom due to the cot being in there. i ended up providing better pictures of the back garden and the front of the house. they missed off some key info and they managed to get the floorplans completely wrong (doors in the wrong place and rooms the wrong shape) it took 3 attempts before they got it right and that involved be doing the drawing for them in the end.
they were massively apologetic over their cockups and we decided to give them a second chance and they stuck the house on rightmove as a premium listing but i still feel they are marketing the house in a shody manner. the more i have to converse with some of their staff just further demonstrates that they really dont care.

Reckon i’m going to go with house simple. Good reviews!

If houses are on right move it’s because agents haven’t been able to sell them any other way. It costs them a fair bit to list on there apparently so it’s a last resort.

I did wonder about this myself. For instance I was looking round somewhere I might want to live and I saw a house for sale as the agent board was up, but I knew it wasn’t on right move or onthemarket. When I got home I checked and it wasn’t on right move. So I asked the agent and they said that they usually put the houses on rightmove the next day after being put up for sale. I suspected that they were lying or just talking nonsense. Anyway the house sold quickly without ever going on rightmove.

Does anyone know how much it costs for the EA to put the house on rightmove?

Does anyone know how much it costs for the EA to put the house on rightmove

Dunno but House Simple charge £295 inc vat for the following and (I guess!) still make a profit: 3 mths Rightmove, Zoopla +500 sites; Professional photos; Professional floorplans; Viewings and feedback system; Housesimple listing; Advert editing suite; Valuation Guide; Email and text alerts

Not sure I agree that right move is for stuff that doesn’t sell. We’re moving to an area 40 miles away. Just so happens, our buyer is from a similar distance away. Having an online presence was a big part of it for us.

Maybe we should contact some estate agents though and see how much of their stuff never gets to rightmove. We see it as the default house buying/selling tool now.

I used housesimple base (195 + vat package), I thought it was very good (no sign, on RM etc etc etc, all calls forwarded to me), saved me over 3 grand.

do:
– make sure you tidy/present/declutter/do the garden/tart up house before bloke takes photos ( and viewings)
– accept you will get the odd tourist/spectator
– understand that end of chain helps you and the buyer
– need to be available for all viewing and allow people you think are gen breathing time on their own etc
– be comfortable haggling etc

I thought I was pretty lucky -one honest tourist (we wanted to see what you got for X round here), one honest dreamer – our house is sold to a absolutely definite cash buyer – has he done the survey ? – no …….. and the others I thought were gen and everybody who booked to view actually turned up.

good luck

I went with HouseNetwork, they have been faultless.

Story (and discount code I found!) here: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/online-estate-agent-housr-network-the-adventure-begins

Maybe we should contact some estate agents though and see how much of their stuff never gets to rightmove. We see it as the default house buying/selling tool now

probably depends where in the country. I’m in wokingham and a lot of houses sell in hours/days, if stiff is taking longer then maybe a greater proportion go online. For our flat they offered to sell it to an investor on their books, so unless you phoned them and got on their lists you’re already at a dissadvantage.

I’m registered with loads of agents in hudds but they’ve all said they do a mail shot out to registered folk just before it goes into rightmove.