Estate Agent Fees - Negotiable or not?

shallowpockets

Hi, we are in the process of putting our house on the market and looking at Connells, Halifax and Spencers, all are saying that their rates are fixed, are they? Can I push them down?

clutton_2

smaller independents are often more likely to reduce their fees than the large chains - but ask, if you dont ask you dont get !

nhp

I just negotiated with a large chain to get their rate down to 1% if I buy and sell through them, or 1.25% if I just sell through them, with a 2 week rolling notice period (i.e. no tie-in period).
EVERYTHING is negotiable!!!! Just play them off against each other. And, most improtantly, make your house as sellable as possible - if they see that you've put effort into making your house desirable, they'll WANT your business!!

clutton_2

nhp - that cheers me up, i have a "sticky" property at the moment - thanks !

welnik

My friend gave me some good advice.

She had a lovely barn conversion to sell and had about 5 estate agents round. She new that it would sell well. The EA told her to put it on for £110,000 which she thought was a joke. After negotiation, she got them down to 0.5% fees and put it on the market for £135,000. It sold in 3 days for £133,500.

She played all the EA's off against each other and it all worked out nicely for her.

shallowpockets

Perhaps it depends on whether they think that your property is "sellable" quickly. Obviously this barn was whereas mine I think will stick for a while and that's maybe why no-one's shifting down, lowest I've got is 1.5%.

suzyp1982

we negotiated ours down from 1.75% to a fixed price, which turned out to be 1.30% of the selling price

shallowpockets

What am I doing wrong? I think that I might have to get dirty and actually mention one Estate Agent to the other and say what rate they offering then, I'm sure that there is scope to get them down to a lower rate, let's face it where we live there's not that much coming onto the market anyway at the moment.

Some tips on how to negotiate would be very much appreciated.

suzyp1982

Be cheeky!

when we had the estate agents round the lady said that he fees were 1.75% so would cost us about £1900 i think? anyway, i think at this point my eyes popped out of my head as i was thinking in the regine of £1000!? (on the basis my parents sold my grans house for alot more than what we were selling for, for £1100)

So i said to the lady, that we really wanted to go with her (estate agents) that we think they have the best advertsing in the area, reputation etc (generally suck up to them) then said that we really couldnt afford it, we presumed that it would be about £1k (using example above) is there anyway that they could reduce their fees?? (with a really sad look on your face!!)

abra cadabra fees reduced to a reasonable level, although they still ripped us off as we did all the viewings!!!

shallowpockets

Might just try that! Will keep you posted on how I get on!

courtjester

Don't forget to add VAT to the agent's percentage - they won't forget when it comes to billing time!

Another trick you can use to increase exposure for your property AND negotiate a lower fee is to advertise your home privately online (with a well-established company), tell your agent AND offer to forward all private enquiries you receive through the agent for viewings etc., IN RETURN for a reduction in their fee for such buyers introduced privately.

The advertising will cost you £100-150 if you choose a decent online service, but you could easily get the agents to trim far more off their fee if you ultimately find your own buyer, leaving the agent to run the sale for you. Suggest start at 50% reduction if you find the buyer - even 25% represents £500 off of a £2,000 bill (plus VAT!!).

Alternatively, you could run the private buyers yourself and save the whole of the agent's fee....