We are facing a potential downsizing in order to keep finances in check – but I’ve calculated the cost of moving to £10k alone.

In order to keep any move financially viable I need to be very careful with the pennies and am wondering if the ‘online only’ type services (Purplebricks etc) are able to genuinely follow through on their promise to beat the agents at their own game for a considerable saving on fees.

£895 obviously sounds much more attractive an agent fee than circa £5k, but the convenience of having an office literally 2mins walk away and therefore the ability to knock heads together when required has me currently leaning towards a ‘traditional’ agent.

Do we have much real world experience here?
How noticeably different are the two services?

Yes we’re using them at the moment to sell a house in Wetherby. They’ve been absolutely rubbish. The tv ad says something like ‘does everything a high street estate agent does without the commission’. That is utter pish.

We’ve had two emails from them in 6 months, one saying ‘I see you’ve dropped the price, hopefully the house will now sell’. The do zero marketing in the traditional sense of getting people in to view your house. They don’t give any advice on what you should do to shift the property.

From a personal experience of the people we’ve dealt with then they are total pish and I would avoid.

Just about to dump them.

…and breath.

I’ll add that if things are really moving quickly in your area then an online agent should be fine. For a property that may need a bit of marketing to shift then I’d avoid.

Yup, you pay less, they do less but we’ve not found that a problem

We bought our house through Purple Bricks, we dealt directly with the vendor and had no involvement or communication with them once we had our offer accepted. Would I use them to sell my house based on a buyers view? Probably not.

Yup, you pay less, they do less

But that’s not the service they sell, ‘Proper estate agents. Without the commission’, that’s shite.

i think it depends on the property and how long you think it will stick around. the easier it is to sell then the less you need an agent.
me personally i would use purple bricks because i know there is a demand and my flat will sell easily
(one below me sold through purple bricks for 1% under a high asking price the week of brexit after about 2 weeks of being online) if the property is quirky with a limited market or other similar properties are hanging around for 6 months then you need a good agent.

So in essence if you don’t actually need an estate agent then they’re fine.

I think it also depends a lot on the local staff. I know people in Exeter who have had good service and who speak very highly of the Purple Bricks chap here.

For balance, we are using a local agent (who also happens to be a neighbour), who we thought would do a really good job on getting the house sold asap, aaaaaand

We’ve had two emails from them in 6 months, one saying ‘I see you’ve dropped the price, hopefully the house will now sell’. The do zero marketing in the traditional sense of getting people in to view your house. They don’t give any advice on what you should do to shift the property.

From a personal experience of the people we’ve dealt with then they are total pish and I would avoid.

Just about to dump them.

They also wanted £2.5K for the privilege of doing nothing, so YMMV.

Going to try another local agent, who promises to be better (we shall see), and if not, then Purple Bricks may well be an option. So far, they couldn’t be any worse.

Anyone want to buy a house in West Lancashire ?

Hmm… I’m buying / selling.

The house I’m buying is through Purple bricks. Almost didn’t go and see it as the photos were so poor and the hassle of registering all your details just to get a viewing. However when I got there it was much better than the photos, he was getting no viewings at all… and I got a bargain.

Selling I used a local estate agent, they staged the photos beautifully, managed the viewings and in my opinion were worth the money.

But 5k sounds very expensive… my bill will be closer to 3k (marketing + 1%) Can you get a better deal from another agent?

You are committed to the fee with purple bricks so if you decide to bin them you are down the cash

the call centre is supposed to be rubbish

a few houses in my area have bitten the bullet and relisted with old fashioned bricks and mortar estate agents

we have decided to go for bricks and mortar with a keen fee

I know someone who could not recommend them any higher (Purple bricks), in the Northampton area, maybe it depends on the quality of the staff you get to deal with?

OP, where did you get the 5k figure from? Most of the estate agents near me, Bath area, are falling over themselves to attract sellers. Easy to get them to drop their usual 1.5% down to 0.75.

Is your 5k figure if for 1.5%? 2.5k vs 895 is a different equation.

I notice that purple bricks houses often have an asking price way above the norm. not sure if this is just people trying it on, or purple bricks led. Just a thought.

You are committed to the fee with purple bricks so if you decide to bin them you are down the cash

Yes I know, but we’re paying council tax on the property every month so much as it would pain me to give them any money we do need to sell.

Re the point above, in our experience the high prices are purple bricks led. That’s why we’ve dropped the price. As I said utter pish for many reasons.

Sold my house with them earlier this year. They were great!

Had a local agent (real person) to deal with. House went on the market on a Saturday night and sold by Sunday evening! That wouldn’t have happened with a trad agent as they are not open.
Photos were great, communication was great, the valuation was above what we expected.

Would definitely use them again.

The conveyancers they are tied to on the other hand were absolutely dreadful, avoid them at all costs!

£895 for listing
£300 extra if you want them to do viewings.

We didn’t use them. I had them around and he seemed OK…his valuation seemed more based on land registry data than a true understanding of the current local market but he did arrive at the same list price as the local agent.

We’re lucky to be in an area where the house would have sold itself anyway, and so we thought a proper agent would maximise the price for us should we get competing bids.

Really poor with the MiL (can’t blame them for that :-)). I think they trade a bit on being an ‘internet business’ but every agent worth their salt is putting your house on RightMove where I reckon more people look anyway.

Standard agents, the last local one we used was well worth it, securing 50K more for our house than 3 others valued it at, inside 3 weeks – but maybe the other 3 were just shocking, so shop around.

Also avoid online conveyancers if you wish to retain some hair.

Without wishing to be nosey, is downsizing right? The cost of moving is a substantial sum that you’ll never see again these days, unless you’re moving to rental and freeing up the equity.

Sold with then last year, and the chap was 1st class.

All emails and phone calls answered ASAP, great photos and advice throughout.

It might depend on the agent you get, is it a franchise sort of a deal?

If you’re in Nottingham I would recommend him unreservedly.

APF

What about the other one that’s getting promoted on TV?

https://www.tepilo.com/

Surely if it’s priced right it’ll sell. ‘Marketing’ is irrelevant in such circumstances.

If I want to move house and I know the area I want, I’ll just use zoopla or rightmove and be walking/driving around the streets I’m looking at.

The sooner ‘traditional’ estate agents die out the better. It’s a racket. And they all seem to drive new range rovers X5’s etc. At least the ones near me do.

As someone else said above we also purchased our house from a seller through purple bricks, I had no contact except the first viewing appointment, I do know there in house solicitors were terrible, I used a local one we knew but the seller used there’s based in Southampton they delayed and delayed complete joke. Luckily my solicitor was on point but me popping in everyday probably didn’t help bet they were glad when mine was dealt with.

Do we have much real world experience here?

Ive got a lot of ‘real world’ experience, so would suggest in the strongest possible terms that you really don’t want to downsize, unless you are old or its the last resort.

Do what you need to do to get through your financial issues, whatever it takes, as it will be so much harder to move back up the housing ladder later if you sell up now.

To be fair the comments regarding online estate agents showing no interest, doing f all once they have you signed up, giving no advice and/or estate agenting type stuff rings true for all but one high street agent I’ve ever dealt with!

Really can’t see the point of them these days with the likes of Right Move.

Depends how involved in the process you want / are willing to be.

I didn’t want to do viewings, deal with our buyer (in particular) or otherwise use up my time for something I could pay someone else to do for me.

A *good* local agent can be very handy…

We sold ours with HouseNetwork (IIRC ~£600). Had 6 valuations from local bricks&mortar EA’s. We took the pics and wrote the description. My Mrs did the viewings (she works in sales) as we could point out all the work that had been done to the house.
First sale chain collapsed, sold again quickly and went through no bother.
The house was in a desirable area and had been fully renovated so we knew it would sell easily, only wanted the EA to stick a board outside and put it on Rightmove.

We then moved into a rental whilst our project was finalised – the local bricks&mortar EA that is handling the house for the landlord have been the biggest bunch of incompetent **** I’ve ever dealt with. I couldn’t begin to imagine the pain and hassle of these cockbadgers trying to sell my house.

I’d rather buy a used car than deal with local EA’s

I have dealt with there representatives on the lettings side(at work level not as a customer/tenant) and if they are anything to go by then they are pretty shocking, loads of broken appointments, lies and general incompetence.

I work within the lettings/Estate agency industry and general thoughts are they over promise and under deliver.