Estate agent fees

camper_1982

What percentage fee on the sale of a £120k house should i expect to pay.
Had one estate agent round and they have quoted 1.5%, is this good?

princessamy86

1.5% sounds ok to me, try and make sure it's 1.5% of selling price and not of asking. Check out your contract terms carefully before you sign anything, and also try and limit their tie in period to maybe 8 or 12 weeks. Lots of agencies will try and tie you in for 26 weeks, which is a long time if they turn out not to be very good. Is the agent on rightmove? Will they charge you any extra for advertising costs? Is there a withdrawal fee payable?

parallax_20

1.5% seems to be the norm for my area for sole agency contracts. Some agents will do it for as little as 1% in easy to sell areas. Local agents now need to work harder to sell a property in the current market. Be aware that the fee excludes VAT, check the small print. You need to add VAT to get the real cost. As said previously, ensure the minimum period is reduced to 8-12 weeks max...you don't want to be locked in with a rubbish agent who can't sell your property for too long. I would personally opt for mult-agency. Fees will probably be around 2%, but it also gives the agents more incentive to work harder for you, increases exposure etc...and if one turns out to be rubbish, you can drop them and get someone else on board without losing marketing time.

We're in the process of exchanging contracts finally, but its taken us 12 months and 6 agents to find a buyer and 3 price drops. We always had at least 2 agents working for us bring in the buyers.

Good luck.

LandyAndy

Make sure the contract says that their fee is payable on completion and not at some earlier time.

I saw one contract that declared the fee payable when the agent had introduced someone 'ready, willing and able to proceed'. I had that changed.

1.5% is about right.