Online estate agents

[TROOPER88]

Thanks for your thoughts.

It's a victorian building so the lounge is in keeping with the period.

My 8 year old daughter stays over hence the bedroom colour.

It's a big flat in immaculate condition.

I think I'll reduce it to 335k and make a smaller profit on this one but would be in a good position when buying.

I think after all that has been discussed a high street agent maybe the best option.

[Prohibiting]

High street agent but try to agree on a set fee? £3k is probably a fair price for both parties. Anything more and the agents are just out there to rinse money from you. As said by other posters, a £150k and a £400k house should make no difference! When I tried selling a house (worth approx £130-140k), I said to the agents that if they couldn't do me a set price of £1.2k then I'd try my luck with Purple Bricks for £700. The agents took up my offer.

[FiF]

When we have sold houses in the past we have looked around EA first from the angle of prospective buyers. The one that, to us, seems to do the best job of dealing with a prospective customer gets the job of selling ours. It's never been the cheapest one incidentally.

[rfisher]

House Network.

You can close this thread now.

[TROOPER88]

Just spoken with EA.

Flat reduced to offers over 330k

If it doesn't sell at this figure I'll rent it out for 6 months.

[crankedup]

33q said:

crankedup said:

Why is it that high st agents use % to work out the selling fee? This seems completely unreasonable given the wide spectrum of selling prices of houses. It's not like the work involved is particularly different from a 120k house and a 500k house.

I'm not an estate agent nor have any direct connection to one. Since when has the cost of providing the service been tied to the selling price? Everyone charges the market rate and manages their costs to make more or less money. I do think selling an expensive house costs the agent more. Better photos, more complex viewings, longer chains, more complex finance arrangements etc

Personally I use 2 agents, one for selling, one for letting, I've bought off the same agent too

I certainly agree that it would likely cost more money to sell higher end property, but the differential between the examples I have suggested, I cannot imagine it costs a single penny more to sell the lower and higher end. Of course it's a customer decision regarding who they employ to act as their agent. Personally I see agents fees as a rip off and pleased to see some genuine competion enter the market. It is making a difference in our patch regards fees.

[Justayellowbadge]

TROOPER88 said:

Just spoken with EA.

Flat reduced to offers over 330k

If it doesn't sell at this figure I'll rent it out for 6 months.

You might want to ask them to remove the reference to an open house on July 16th -hardly helps to advertise it has been sitting on the market a while.

[TROOPER88]

Justayellowbadge said:

You might want to ask them to remove the reference to an open house on July 16th -hardly helps to advertise it has been sitting on the market a while.

Good point

Thanks

[kingston12]

I am at the other end of Surbiton and the whole market seems to have completely ground to a halt here.

A lot of the 2 bed flats were pushing up towards £600k asking price at the start of the year have been removed and now relisted at nearer £500k. That is quite a haircut already and I still haven't seen one of them that has actually sold.

This is in a market where everything in the more sought-after roads would sell the day after it was listed.

That said, they were very over-priced anyway, even given the current bubble. Yours doesn't seem badly priced to me for that area, and I suspect that you may just need to need to wait a little longer in this market.

Good luck with the sale.

[kennydies]

I totally disagree with fees being percent based as as someone said selling a £100k flat should be no difference to selling a £500k flat.

It is the same as tipping. A waiter would want £1 for bringing a £10 bottle of wine but £10 for a £100 bottle of wine. The waiter has done no extra to justify the extra tip.

I think the first estate agent to bring in fixed price selling will corner the market.

[CaptainSensib1e]

Rangeroverover said:

Their model is, get an upfront fee, "good morning good discount goodbye"if it sells great, there is zero customer service. 50% of my job is keeping a sale together post offer, having a line of communication up and down the chain to sort any problems, dealing with the various solicitors.

Agree fully with this.

We just moved last week, and had all sorts of issues along our chain. Our agent were brilliant, pulled everything together, and chased everyone constantly to push things through. I genuinely beleive without their proactive stance our sale would have fallen through.

We would have paid less with an online agent, but we probably would have got less money for our house, and I doubt there would have been the same level of aftercare. Agents aren't just about finding someone who wants ot buy your house, a good one does far more than that.

[scenario8]

Loads of companies acting as "estate agents" operate on flat fee bases. These operations tend not to be very good or successful and "corner the market" only in fairly defined sections of any market. I use quotation marks as at least historically many of those operators chose not to trade as estate agents so as to circumvent legislation but that's a bit of a footnote.

Plenty more will fix fees, incidentally.

FWIW there isn't really either any fixed rule that cheaper properties cost the same or less to market as more expensive properties but property sales are as much a free market as any industry so the client has a fair chunk of choice and control over their fees should they feel disinclined to pay what they consider to be too much.

Best of luck OP. SW London hasn't fallen off a cliff but there are obvious factors at play (Brexit and associated issues, changes to BTL rules, tightening of mortgage rules and so on). I suspect the position over commercial premises is a major turn off.