How many people renegotiate estate agents fees?

Andyf33

Yes. had written contract in place but explained to them that I was under no obligation to go through with the sale. I was lucky in that I was not desperate to sell - if the situation were different I may not have been so bold - but would have still asked for a reduction.

googler

Well, since you seem to be fond of quotations, how about

"My word is my bond"

You said to the EA "I want to sell", you also signed an agreement saying what you'd pay on a successful sale, then went back on this and essentially blackmailed the agent into giving you £500 off this the day before conclusion.

Have I missed anything?

If the agent had stuck to his guns, and you pulled out, where would that have left the buyers of this house? Ready to move, probably arranged a removal firm, utility changes, etc etc.......

xtra_time

Well I asked and I got them to go to 1.25% instead of 1.5% so not too bad.

Andyf33

Well done on getting them to reduce fees.

Googler - blackmail is illegal, asking a party to a contract to review a specific term/condition of that contract is perfectly legal and happens in millions of ways every day. Either party to a contract can request a review of any t/c and the t/c can be modified/removed etc if both parties agree to it. I simply asked for a review of price or i would consider withdrawing (which I was legally entitled to do under the contract) and the EA agreed. The EA could easily have said no.

Had the EA refused then the sale would have still gone ahead. I wasnt going to lose a sale for the sake of £500 as that would be plain daft.

The point being you can ask anyone to review their price at any stage - you never know you might just save money. How many people have accepted an offer on their house and then had the buyer come back with a lower offer and threaten to withdraw? I simply asked the same of the EA.

Anyway - I learnt my lesson, the wife spent the £500 on a new handbag

alexlyne

Doozergirl wrote: »

And you rejected the idea of house network over £1500 + VAT?

err... yes.
The reasoning was that
1. it wasn't an upfront fee,
2. we wouldn't have to do the viewings (dinkys = not much time spent at home)
3. A house we viewed was being done through House Network, they got in touch hours afterwards asking for feedback, so we did, and said we had viewings the following weekend, but were considering it.. I hoped that the following week they'd check up on what we saw, but nothing. With the 'proper' estate agents, we get to talk to them about the area, the market, what's going on etc, which we could never do with a guy in a call centre in Birmingham (or wherever).. so hopefully the value added from a local EA in our case will also help our potential buyer.
4. The all-in upfront price from HN was 700 (if i recall correctly, even includes a board), so difference in price is a grand. Can a local EA get an extra K from a buyer? who knows.... maybe...

I was in the EA giving them a cheque yesterday (for the HIP), another punter was in there, talking fees to the manager, who confirmed what I knew that all the other EAs charge a lot more (2300+vat) for their services... so they knew their market and whether they had to drop their prices or not. I'm guessing that if you went into any of these other EAs, they wouldn't hesistate on giving you 10% off and making you think you were getting a good deal.

at googler

Where's the 'easy' bit of this process?

I was referring to the guy doing the HIP - a 10min survey, plug it into a computer, get the search done (another internet form), and bob's yer uncle for £300!

Anyways, any FTBs looking at spending under 100K, look a bit north of Cardiff!

not_loaded

Well, my tuppence worth on this is if you browse Rightmove, you'll see a perceptible quality difference between Housenetwork, and some other agents. My view is that they do a high quality marketing job. A few other agents also do a comparable job.

I've had six agents look at my house now for marketing, and I've been impressed by some of them and not by others. Their fees varied from 15 times the price of Housenetwork down to only 10 times the price of Housenetwork. One of them parked his £40,000 crushmobile right outside. A few of them talked about ‘difficult times’, but not one of them had the wisdom to offer lower, more competitive terms.

A neighbour's house was recently marketed by one of these agents, and in my opinion marketed very badly (lousy photos and poor description) and they were at 11 times the price of Housenetwork.

When I see a property poorly represented on Rightmove, I tend to think there's a good reason for the poor presentation, ie: it's actually not a very presentable property.

You have to make your own mind up as to what you think about all these issues.

Concerning HIPs, I know for a fact that some of the local HIPs I've seen are extremely inaccurate in some respects. So, as always it's buyer beware!

northerner79

People make this stupid error of going with the cheapest EA, bad move! It is normally, but not always the case of you get what you pay for. If you pay an average agent 1% and they get you 195k you pay them £1950 and are left with 193,050, you pay a good agent 2% and they get you 200k, you pay them 4k and are left with 196k. Take your pick, I know what I prefer!!

keith969

My agent wanted 1.5% but with very little argument went to 1.25%. What I can't understand is why it should be a % in the first place - what is the difference selling a £150K property to a £500K one?

googler

The $500k one will be in America, so there's more travelling involved!

googler

Seriously, though, maybe the profit on the £500k properties covers the losses on the £100k ones.....?