Any decent ways of selling without agents

googler

sweetd wrote: »

OK you say if I bypass EA then I won't sell, does anyone have statistics, I am thinking of putting it up with on line agent so it goes on Rightmove................ by how much are the chances of it selling reduced by doing this, is it possible to say or are we all just guessing?

Well, Rightmove issued a release the other week that claimed they had around 80% of the market - which suggests that 20% of the houses out there AREN'T on Rightmove. So obviously some sectors of the public are looking elsewhere. That's before you take into account the exposure via non-online avenues - agents' windows, press advertising, other promotional work, follow-ons from viewing other properties, etc.

sweetd wrote: »

"Thats where the agents real skill comes in matching buyers" ........... err are you saying looking on a database where someone has expressed interest in a bungalow at a given price and then matching it to a property is skill....... sorry I just don't get where the skill is that they are paying for

It's not necessarily a skill from the point of view of maintaining a list of active buyers, more the fact that buyers have been leaving their details with your local EAs for many years, and not with you.

Other people have written here in the past about how they didn't buy the house they set out to buy, but ended up with one that was suggested by an EA, either during a viewing, or during a discussion of their needs.

Person A views a home with an EA (which they maybe found on RM), it isn't what they want, so EA says "What do you want?" and it turns out their needs fit the profile of either a house they hadn't considered for some reason, or isn't available yet, but the EA has in the pipeline. How would you get this means of promotion - an EA actively pushing your home at a potential buyer - with mere online exposure via Rightmove or similar?

Sulli

The main thing that sells your house is rightmove - as long as an agent does that and aren't complete retards, it should get viewings.

As for fees, negotiate. I recently put my house up and before doing so sent a block email to all EAs in the city I am in - there's an easy way to do this on rightmove by sending just one email. Most came back with their usual fees, ranging from 1% to 2.5%. 1% to sell a £120,000 2 bed terrace means £1,200, so I went with that and went back to all of them saying that my house, despite being worth more that a 2 bed terrace, will sell easier and take the same amount of input from them, so I want fees of £1200 or 0.5%. 5 of them came back to me and agreed, so I went with one of them.

Even if it takes 12 months to sell, they make £1200 and have probably paid out £200 to rightmove, zoopla etc, and spent a few hours taking pics, uploading the details and taking enquiries. Easy money if you ask me, and hopefully it'll sell in 2 months and everyone's happy.

googler

Sulli wrote: »

Even if it takes 12 months to sell, they make £1200 and have probably paid out £200 to rightmove, zoopla etc, and spent a few hours taking pics, uploading the details and taking enquiries. Easy money if you ask me, and hopefully it'll sell in 2 months and everyone's happy.

I think your income/expenses calculation of "£1200 - £200 = £1000 profit" has left a few things out of the expenses column....

GAH

That agent won't be making a whole lot of profit out of £1200 quid

googler

Income - £1200

Expenses - £200 (?) on RM, plus a proportion of the list below - £???, leaving -

Profit - £???



Taken from an earlier post, possibly not exhaustive

- Office Rent
- Business rates
- Water/Electric rates
- Staffing fees
- Legal protection/insurances
- Cost of running cars or paying petrol expenses
- Printing and computer maintainance
- Printing costs (ink/toners and media)
- Distribution of leaflets, etc
- Advertising - both online and local newspaper

In the expense column for every sale, approximately the total of the above for each year, divided by number of sales in that year, surely?

sweetd

googler, er yes a flat rate or vary rate according to package but not value of house, same effort same cost

Sulli

I didn't say £1,000 profit....
Boo hoo for the estate agents having to work for their money:rotfl:

googler

Sulli wrote: »

I didn't say £1,000 profit....

I know you didn't - you said "they make £1200 and have probably paid out £200 to rightmove, zoopla etc, and spent a few hours taking pics, uploading the details and taking enquiries. Easy money if you ask me"

Since those were the only figures you mentioned, it seemed you did regard it as that simple. Apologies if not. What do you reckon the profit is on your example?

Financial_Savvy

Compare the service from an online estate agent verse a high street agent.

They both have similar overheads (office space, staff, travel, phone calls etc) but you would expect a high street agent to have higher costs of expensive prime offices in the middle of shopping centres and staff to do viewings etc.

Then compare £500 verse say £3500 and ask yourself this:

Does this equate to value for money? and which is the most profitable?

High street agents rob customers blind.

sweetd

so why don't rightmove have a service where they allow customers to advertise direct? (if they don't want EA involved)......... it is just disappointing that in the age of the internet and mass usage there needs to be some highly paid intermediary between sellers and buyers, the market is crying out for E Bay style of linking sellers and buyers for a small fee (for those who are willing to not bother with agent)........