Hello, Just a quick post to make people aware of how easy it is to sell your home without an estate agent, Monkeymove provide a range of services to assist people in marketing their own home with the view to save £1000's in estate agent fees. MonkeyMove can advertise your home on some of the largest property portals in the UK as well as provide a For Sale Board and heaps of information and guidance on managing the sale of your own home.

Finding a buyer is not the only thing...

You have to make sure that the buyer can proceed and the sale actually goes through.

Have a look at the tips at http://www.choosing-estate-agent.info/selling_privately.htm

Richard Webster

Hi, you're right there's quite a few good sites out there to help you to sell your own home and cut out the estate agent.Some friends of mine have just put their home on with a internet sales agency and they have already had lots of interest from potential buyers. This is definitely the way forward and at least if you're selling your home yourself privately, you can control what's going on and not have to worry about some of the tricks estate agents can get up to!

I didn't actually say that - I made the point that finding a buyer is no good if the transaction doesn't go through.  

A lot of people think that all you have to do is find a buyer who agrees to pay a price that you will accept.

Not a lot of help if the buyer can't get a mortgage or has a chain from hell below him!

 You can sell privately but you have to understand that it doesn't just magically happen.   If you find a buyer will you know what questions to ask about his or her ability to proceed?   If you had a choice of buyers - one selling an ex-Council brick built semi and another selling a private flat in a 1960s block - do you have any idea of the potential delays that might be caused with one of those two?

I am a mortgage broker. I worked for 15 years within an estate agency.

My wife is a nationally respected conveyancing solicitor of 19 years in the industry.

When we move we will use an estate agent. In fact every time we've sold we've used an estate agent, even investment properties.

Why?  2 reasons.

Some transactions proceed smoothly and the estate agent will regard himself as having earned some easy money.  Many transactions don't proceed smoothly and the estate agent earns every penny of his fee*.  Selling privately - you might get lucky, you might not. You mainly hear about the 'got lucky's' who've saved themselves several thousands. By default you won't hear about the failures. 

* Obviously in both cases the estate agent won't get any credit, but there are many middle scenerios where the agent has nipped a problem in the bud or held a chain together where it would have otherwise fallen apart where again, they rarely get credit.

The other reason - this is tricky to explain. I want to sell my house for the highest figure possible, but that figure isn't set by me, nor the estate agent, it's set by the small army of buyers out there looking for houses.

So, what I need to do is expose my house to the most people possible so that I stand the maximum chance of finding the person willing to spend a little bit extra to live here.

That, in general is the local estate agent with the best reputation and the most sold boards out. They must also promote their properties on the largest property website since I know many people who only look on that site, but I know no-one who only looks at any other site.

So, these 'sell your house privately' websites are good for choice and it's fair to say there are enough chancers in the estate agent community to drive people into selling privately.

But in summary I feel to get a more secure sale and increase the chance of getting the maximum price for the house the best local estate agent is your man.

I know people who have made sucessful private sales at good prices. I know people who have sold their house privately, it gone wrong, then gone to an estate agent whose sold the house for £5000 more and only charged £2500. There will be examples of every scenario and m,any stories of bad agents or 'percieved to be bad agents'. 

If you want my personal strategy for next time: I know the agent i will use, he's got the best board presence in the town. I will offer him 1% up to £X,000's and 5% of everything above that figure. I may even offer him hit bonuses for very high sale prices. I'll make it worth his while to get a high price and see how it goes.

Doesn't it seem odd that we have a very valuable thing and without fail we want to incentivise the man selling it to "get rid of it cheap" by paying him the lowest %age possible - advertising/websites/details all cost him money. If we aren't giving it to him he will want to keep his costs down.

Just my little bug bear. Sorry to harp on. 

Adrian

Oh - here's a thought.

'The estate agent was a crook, he made me pay too much for my house, I'll never use him again'

Good reasoning or bad reasoning? 

 

 

 

 

 

"Some transactions proceed smoothly and the estate agent will regard himself as having earned some easy money.  Many transactions don't proceed smoothly and the estate agent earns every penny of his fee*.  Selling privately - you might get lucky, you might not. You mainly hear about the 'got lucky's' who've saved themselves several thousands. By default you won't hear about the failures. 

* Obviously in both cases the estate agent won't get any credit, but there are many middle scenerios where the agent has nipped a problem in the bud or held a chain together where it would have otherwise fallen apart where again, they rarely get credit."

 I agree.  I don't think there is anything wrong with selling privately but I think there are a lot of people out there who don't understand what is involved and as Adrian 007 has said, it is only when it goes wrong that the penny drops...  Some estate agents don't help themselves by being useless, but the good ones can see possible problems coming and move to nip them int hebud ebfore they become serious.

When showing your home as the seller, it is important to realize that the only reason buyers are looking at your house is to cross it off their list.

 

Absolutely top advice Adrian, thank you but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on those people who put personal letters through your door asking to buy your property? Is it worth a phone call?

Definately some eye opening points from Adrain007, but I'm still going to try and sell privately.  I think estate agents earn far too much, how can they justify charging a percentage of the house value when the prices are increasing so quickly?

 

Hi,

I have always wondered why estate agents charge a %, and then I thought why have house prices increased so much?? I think we have an answer!!!!

Ian 

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Regards

Ian

I advertised my property as "for-sale-by-owner" on a site only last week and I've already accepted an offer. I'm not saying that it will go through having read Adrian's post but fingers crossed i'm the one in three that does complete.


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Many thanks for your co-operation.

There are some very good points here made by Adrian.  Unfortunately, the Estate Agents of which Adrian speaks seem to be very few and far between.

My local Estate Agents seem to adopt the same strategy, as follows:  Employ young girls in the office who don't have a clue what's going on.  The only time you actually see the senior guy from the agency is at the beginning when they're after your business (and sometimes not even then)!  The young girls are effectively receptionists, passing messages/offers from buyer to seller, seller to buyer etc.  A job which a well-trained monkey could do.  These Estate Agents are not newly established but have been operating for many years.  They are obviously out to maximise their profits by paying peanuts to their staff.  If the staff were trained to be able to fulfill the role required then the % charged by Estate Agents would be justified.  I'm not saying that all EAs are the same but I've yet to find a good one.  They are few and far between. 

That said, should (god forbid), I ever decide to move again, I will certainly be looking at selling privately.  It will be interesting to know how you guys go on and I'm sure you'll report back on here.  Thanks.

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Kind regards
Indi

“In the end, the love that you take is the love that you give”

Hi all, I'm new to the forum. 

Regarding selling your house without an estate agent, if you are selling in England or Wales and your property has 3 or more bedrooms you need to have ordered a Home Information Pack before marketing it.  

It is quite easy to buy a HIP privately and then use it in selling yourself.  Benefits of getting a HIP privately are numerous not least of which is that if you later decide to employ an agent to sell your property you can take your HIP to that agent and are not forced to stay with them which can sometimes happen if they organise the HIP for you.

I'm a HIP provider by the way.   Nice to meet you all. 

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Happy to help.

Hi & welcome nice to meet you too.

I'm a HIP provider by the way.

You need to get to the Doctor's, that can be nasty !

"I'm a HIP provider by the way."

Do you mean you actually create HIP's or do you put a couple of hundred quid on your referral??

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Regards

Ian