Online Estate Agents (emoov, hatched, housenetwork, etc)

Does anyone have any experience of using an online estate agent? I’ve been looking at emoov, housenetwork, and hatched.

They seem good in that they get you on rightmove, zoopla, etc and charge around £500-700 instead of thousands. Also you never have to be face to face with an estate agent.

I’ve been looking online for reviews but it’s hard to know the real reviews from scripts/employees/bots used by the companies to elevate their status.

Any experiences? Thanks in advance.

I’ve used the equivalent services for landlords & wouldn’t bother with an agent again. Check the small print as some will advertise until completion whereas others only offer a limited time. The letting ones guide you through all the legalities too like EPCs and all that.

I used housesimple, (at 195 + vat for 6 months, basic). Worked well for me:
they
– did photos/floorplan (via 3rd party photographer)
– create base internet ad
you
– tart up ad (wording etc)
– get you own epc before they can put it online(shop around 50-85??)
– sort out own solicitor/etc
once ad is on (*all std/expected websites rm,zoo etc) they will give your telno to anybody who calls.
It worked for me – but you must be able to do all your own viewings (*mainly ok – I work about 1/2 an hour away but the vast, vast majority wanted to view evening/weekends[so bear in mind your time] – I only had to turn one call down as we just couldn’t get a mutual time and amazingly – well it was to me – all callers actually turned up pretty much when they said they would), be able to negotiate, read and ‘deal’ with people and their spiel etc. Only got 1 tourist out of 12ish viewings, there was 1 ‘dreamer’ – made an offer (but I knew that when they told me they had a ‘guaranteed cash buyer, that had not done a survey/engaged solictors yet etc’ I always knew it was likely to fail and then got a real buyer, negotiated and it all went fine.

We are buying a house at the moment through house network and they (touch wood) seem very good to me. They seem to view the whole thing as a process, so whenever something significant happens, they progress to the next stage, with none of the BS that you get from a traditional agent. A couple of examples – when we made an offer, I had an email within half an hour confirming our offer (and detailing the value of the offer) – so we knew that it had been passed on to the seller. When the offer was accepted, Rightmove was updated within a few hours showing the house as SSTC. Also, the seller showed us around the house himself – but this was also the case for other houses that we looked at which used a traditional agent, which makes you wonder what a traditional agent does except tell you lies and put an advert on Rightmove.

I used housenetwork to sell my house 4 years ago. They were great, would recommend.

We used Mov8 in Edinburgh for a recent house purchase. Cost us £600 rather than the 1% + VAT we were quoted from a local estate agency, and so saved us a not inconsiderable sum. There was zero discernible difference in the service we received, and as such we’ll be using them again when we sell our Edinburgh flat. So much less hassle than dealing with actual solicitors.

Sold with Housenetwork two years ago. Good communication of viewers comments and offers. Will be using next time we move. Don’t see the point of shop estate agents, when was the last time you went into town to look in their windows. Most people looking just use rightmove or zoopla don’t they? So the cheapest way to get it on those sites is an online estate agent.

Yep.

Works really well if you are showing the property yourself, otherwise you need to buy extra time off them.

Brilliant, thanks for all the feedback! Seems like housenetwork is the way to go.

I’m just trying to work out if it’s worth the extra £100 for the account manager and sales progression – anyone got any experience of using these?