Sell your house at Tesco for £200!!

Jowo_2

I personally would not want to negotiate with a buyer direct and would prefer timewasters to be deterred and I assume an agent can spot a tyre kicker a mile off, those not in a position to buy or haven't progressed very far with the sale of their own property.

I do see the attraction of a high profile advert but my experience of interviewing potential tenants/lodgers when I used to be a landlord was a very wearying experience of hearing a lot of bulls**t so I'd hate to go through this with a more complex buying process.

adg1

Just my tuppence worth.

All that is being offered is a portal by Tesco. For £200 you can take the pictures youself, upload them yourself, conduct viewings yourself, negotiate offers yourself, keep in touch with solicitors yourself, arrange a HIP yourself, qualify each and every offer you get to make sure none are wasting your time etc etc. I could go on.

Sounds like a lot of work for me to do for the priveledge of a little corner of tesco.com.

What happens if the only time the buyer wants to view is during work hours? Can you keep taking time off? Do you have the time to spend chasing the buyers throughout the process? I don't. I have a full time job and would lose more money than its worth to not use an EA who can works on my behalf. Definitely more than the difference between the fees when you add in all the time required to oversee the process from start to finish. Time is the currency of life - it can be spent, wasted and squandered but never refunded. Myself, and I'm sure many other people, would rather spend their time on other persuits.

There are so many other free-listing sites around that I can't really see the need for Tesco to enter the market and charge £200 for the same thing. Unless we start seeing Tesco Estate Agents in our high streets then I don't really think this is any threat to EAs. Even if we did see Tesco EA they'd probably not be on Rightmove as others have mentioned before.

OP - define what you mean by most properties being sold over the web? If you mean that they are listed on line, which then makes people call in to the EA who then book the viewing, etc etc right through to handing over the keys then I suppose you are right. But to me, thats advertising and not selling.

If properties were all sold online then EAs would be long gone - there would be a line of computers in the window of your local EAs office sending out automated emails with property details to everyone on a huge mailing list. Sooner or later someone will reply with a question or wanting to view - and the computer will be stumped. The internet does not sell a house all it gives the EA a place to display the pitcures that is accessible to people who don't walk down the local high street daily.

You can have an EA place it online for free on the largest aggregator websites in the UK and do all the leg work for you for the sale, or you can pay £200 or whatever the fees end up as, and do the work yourself from start to finish.

Patr100

clutton wrote: »

you always get what you pay for ... £200 ? - not a lot.....

anyway what does Tesco know about selling houses ?

I hear they're planning to start with buy one house get one free offer - but somehow I don't think it will go down well with sellers.

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Jowo_2

A local estate agent where I lived in Scotland and many others too, offers a fixed fee sales service for £500 which included advertising on popular websites and all the usual other services, like viewings/negotiation.

Never really seen the equivalent down south though perhaps there are estate agents out there that just have a single fixed fee price instead of a percentage of sale price which can be hefty.

googler

The trouble with fixed fee vs percentage is that whilst a percentage may yield higher income on higher-value houses, and lower income on others, a fixed fee has to be fixed at a level which will stiil yield an income for the agent.

Doesn't this mean that it will be higher than the equivalent percentage for the lower value houses?

Average fee 1.10% on an £80k flat = £880
Average fee 1.10% on a £250k house = £2750

If the agency makes this total of £3630 on two sales, doesn't that suggest if they're charging a flat fee that they need to charge around £1800 per sale; which leaves the upper owner laughing, but the lower owner crying....

Jowo_2

I can see why a fix fee service is unworkable when applied to properties of vastly different value. I've never used a scottish estate agent fixed fee selling service so don't know if there's a cap or bands according to the value of the property or any strings attached to it. All I know is that I've seen 'we sell your house for £500' on posters in their window. may be a service offered in less affluent neighbourhoods.

Milliewilly

Doesn't anyone remember Asda having their own estate agency a few years ago?? As a Tesco worshipper if they are going into it then they will do it right.

Running_Horse

My local ASDA has property details in store, but couldn't find anything online, so no idea what to do if I liked a house, none of which were local.

googler

Running_Horse wrote: »

My local ASDA has property details in store, but couldn't find anything online, so no idea what to do if I liked a house, none of which were local.

There were pictures of Asda's display 'pods' when they were first launched in .... 2006? 2007? I was left with the impression they had an Asda phone number on them, and that you would be routed to Asda's call centre.... where they would (maybe) try and sell you their or their associates' mortgage or insurance products......

googler

Asda Property Website 'canned' in mid-2009