On-Line Estate Agents

I just wish EAs charged a flat fee. I can't believe they get sometimes four or five times (at my price level) what even the solicitor gets.


I'm glad the online ones have come along to battle against this. Maybe one day they will charge a flat fee. I would be more than happy to pay even say £2k. But £6,500 (selling at £520k at 1% commission)? Forget it.


I'll get 3 round to value but unless one cuts me a major deal, it's online for me next time. I have a pretty bog standard house (ie no major compromises like the 2 in roads next to mine recently: one had a downstairs shower room, the other had the bathroom off a large bedroom) and it's in a very popular/desirable area.


I would tread carefully if your house is 'different' to a typical 2 or 3 up/2 down with upstairs bathroom and would consider a traditional EA in that case.


Jx

We used eMoov for a 2 bed flat sale in London, couldn't really fault them, our 'sales progressor' was great, regulary chasing the chain and keeping us up to date.

It was a frustrating process but that was mainly down to our solicitor and our vendors holding up the process and displaying varying levels of incompetence.

We prefered writing the particulars ourselves as in my opinion we made a better job than the standard estate agent spiel you get on most adverts. The viewings and process for booking them was simple and easy to manage as well.

Considering their fee was £895 Vs c£7.5k for a local B&M estate agent I wouldn't hesitate in recommending them.

I used house network to sell and they were fantastic. Can't fault any aspect of their service. this was after a shoddy half hearted service by a local high street agent at more than triple the cost had failed to achieve a sale we got a sale within days at house network (house network listed it for same price) difference great photos we did the viewings not uninterested estate agents and house network were proactive contacting viewers for feedback.

We sold our 3 bed town house last year through Purple bricks and found them to be fantastic,

We did have a couple of high street estate agents come around before we went with Purple Bricks and they did the usual sales pitch such as how they advertise all around the country and poeple are looking to move in to the area from other counties etc,... but knowing houses in our area were selling quite quickly and as everyone pretty much finds the houses first online through rightmove etc anyway I couldn't really see what I would be paying £1000's for,

We did actually try another online EA the year before (everything fell through and took it off the market) but they were terrible, it was a completely faceless company, you never spoke to the same person twice, had to do all our own viewings and the website was not great,

We finally moved last year with Purple bricks and this was a much better exerience, we got one main contact who was contactable up till 10pm each night, he was our main contact through the whole selling process and he did all the viewings, open day and negotiating and the feed back from people viewing always mentioned how professional he was,

Only down sides I think were after we had the offer, our contact then passed us over to the sales progression team who were always there to help if we asked, but didn't seem to do much unless we asked them to, especially when are buyers were dragging their feet and our seller was chasing us,

They also do this thing where you can either pay up front, or if you want to pay at the end you have to go with their conveyancer which is Premier Property Lawyers (eZie conveyancing) ,.. ***DO NOT DO THIS***, I see this company was mentioned earlier in this thread by chickenmama although this was through Housenetwork.

Their website where you upload all your signed docs and view the progress was great and to start off with everything was going well, however once things started to drag on and are buyers solicitors (who to be fair were equally bad) started delaying things they were impossible to get hold and we went through months of stress with constant phone calls to a generic number where someone would pick up the phone and say I think he is in a meeting ill leave a message and we'd never get a response,..

I'm currently using eMoov and have been more than impressed. I would never use anyone else again. Have a look at Trustpilot for reviews. It's not true that you are left by yourself. In actual fact we have far more sales progression contact and help than we ever got with a high street agent. They have been with us every step of the way. When you accept an offer you are allocated a sales progressor and this is your point of contact for you and your buyer, and they liase with the solcitors too. They are always at the end of the phone/email...no missed calls or "sorry he's just out on a viewing so can't take your call". Eveyone we have spoken to there is polite friendly and efficient. To be honest, (shhhhh don't tell eMoov) I think they undersell themselves with the price they charge, I'd pay more for the level of service I've so far received!