housenetwork - a review

WallyBird

pault123 wrote: »

Is this housenetwork "boom" in certain areas? i've just had a look for all types of house for sales under £150k and in Manchester there are less than 4 properties!

on rightmove there are over 480.

Ours is in Manchester (but not in your price range), and there is another one on a road near us. I don't think it matters where the house is - Rightmove covers the whole country. Well, this is what we decided when we chose HN.

The only thing I might change if I were doing it again would be to go for a different payment option - we went for the cheapest but pay up front. I would feel more comfortable about this if we had had some viewers, but so far there have not been any.

Apart from that, I am happy with the HN service, I think the listing looks great, and that is what other people have told me too. I suspect it is just a slow time of a particularly difficult year for selling. This might be especially true in the north.

cashndash

as you know we have decided no to move, so I am really pleased we went for the cheaper up front option!

We had 3 views in the first week, we withdrew it after 3 weeks (nothing to do with HN).

My friend put her house in the same street as us on with an agent, she has been on for about 5 weeks and has had only 2 viewings, both very early on!!!

As posted earlier, the agent does have a list of people to contact so you would imagine he would get more people through the door, yet we both got the same number of viewings despite this advantage!!

googler

pault123 wrote: »

Is this housenetwork "boom" in certain areas? i've just had a look for all types of house for sales under £150k and in Manchester there are less than 4 properties!

Certain areas? Yes. England and Wales only. When last I looked, there were no HN properties in Scotland. Not one.

cymro

new_home_owner wrote: »

If you are thinking of the housenetwork i would not bother, i would try housesimple and go for the 0.5% deal, then if they dont sell you have got nothing to lose, and it hasnt cost you any money.

Housesimple use all the major portals like rightmove, findaproperty, heres the link

http://www.housesimple.co.uk/

Tried HouseSimple thinking they would be better value than the high street cowboys. This is what I found:

• pre-contract communication - Excellent
• Cost of HIPs - Average - shop round elsewehere for better value
• post-contract communication - Poor - no updates on progress in marketing and having to send same information repeatedly
• speed of service - Slow getting property uploaded to website

It appears the Housesimple strategy is to sell houses as quickly as possible at any price. Almost daily I was haggling - not with would be buyers but Housesimple as they tried to get me to lower the price so they could make a quick profit. A few times I had to remind them they were MY agent. AVOID

SelbyJay_2

I've had an online chat with them this morning and they seem ok. They even cover all legal expenses for about £300 which seems too good to be true.

Particularly in these difficult house selling times, does anyone have any feedback about these guys?

Cheers

googler

SelbyJay wrote: »

I've had an online chat with them this morning and they seem ok. They even cover all legal expenses for about £300 which seems too good to be true.

Particularly in these difficult house selling times, does anyone have any feedback about these guys?

Cheers

Are you referring to Housenetwork or Housesimple ???

felix247

I read through this thread and on here and in other posts housenetwork seems to get positive reviews (with a few negative ones).

With housenetwork offering three payment options, with it being cheaper the more you pay upfront, I'd be interested to learn out of those who have used them, whether they think the option they chose affected the service they received. Are you likely to get better service by chosing the most expensive option, where you pay the majority of the fee upon completion?

My view is that it probably wouldn't make any difference as they don't actively market properties i.e no direct mailing to prospective buyers. Once they have produced the brochure and got your property onto the portal websites, they are just responding to enquiries. So we are considering the cheapest option where you pay everything up front. If our property was struggling to sell with them then we would look at dropping the price rather than switch to a high street EA as our target market is more likely to be looking on Rightmove than on the high street or in the paper.

WallyBird

felix247 wrote: »

With housenetwork offering three payment options, with it being cheaper the more you pay upfront, I'd be interested to learn out of those who have used them, whether they think the option they chose affected the service they received. Are you likely to get better service by chosing the most expensive option, where you pay the majority of the fee upon completion?

We did the pay upfront option and have now had some serious viewings. We are pleased with the level of service we have received, and do not think the payment method has affected it. (We haven't tried the other method, of course.)

If you are the kind of person who likes to take an active role in the process, then HN is ideal and saves a lot of money. If not, perhaps a traditional estate agent might be more appropriate.

Gixer77

I have signed up with Housenetwork and my property went live last Thursday. I had to correct a floorplan and send some better photos as some of the ones they took were too harsh with the flash. Overall the pics are very nice. I had two requests for viewings straightaway - one is going to put an offer in but I think it's going to be waaaay low, from what they said to me on the viewing. The other was a no-show.

One thing that concerns me is the impersonal nature of the emails from my account manager. Now I fully understand the pressure they are under as I think business has exploded for them recently, so they are probably carrying huge workloads. Every email I get from my manager begins with "hi, thank you for your email" - which I think must be a template they use. They never use my name, they never elaborate, and the mails are usually one line long and sometimes do not have all the details I need. This makes me feel very ill at ease as it gives out the impression they really don't give a flying fart about selling my property. While I'm not expecting flowering long chatty emails, at least use my name and throw in a few words of encouragement or something - make it SEEM like you give a crap. As yet I've emailed three times to ask for the text options on the red blob on the Rightmove Premium ad, and have received no reply. Question ignored. The Upmystreet info is ALWAYS a dea link, although my account manager told me that "it works, it just takes some time to come up". Er no - it is a site error dead link. So no local info available to buyers.

I received notification of a pending offer and I realised that the viewer had been emailed to ask for their feedback. No phone call? And when they make their offer do they email it or do they phone? If they email it then this doesn't give the account manager any chance to prod them in the right direction, ie emphasising how my house is stamp duty free or has a brand new bathroom (they can get all these details from my property profile). A cold, clinical email probably starting "hi, thanks for your email" just isn't persuasive enough for someone who is fence-sitting about what to offer for my house. I can't find anywhere on the site that says a negotiator will speak to someone who is making an offer, and maybe help to get a good price. Is this so or is it all done by email?

I was utterly loathe to pay some cocky sharp-suited local agent over £2000 to market my property locally, however they are more pro-active and will personally negotiate with offers and if they have visited the property, they can "big it up" a bit to any interested parties. But I don't feel this extra service is worth another £1400 on top of what I've paid Housenetwork so I took the risk in going with HN.

I'm just under pressure to sell FAST, the no-chain property that I am desperate for has received an offer, PENDING the sale of the potential buyer's house. So I'm praying they can't shift their house and I'll shift mine first, it's a race against time Will be so gutted if I lose out.

WallyBird

Gixer77 - thanks for adding your story. Two viewings in under a week - sounds pretty good to me!
HN do negotiate by phone with potential buyers - our account manager spent several phone calls explaining things to one for us, and has achieved an acceptable offer.
Also, you can talk to your account manager yourself, on the phone or via the live chat line, as well as by emails. I'm sure you are right that they are busy, although I tend to take that as a good thing.

Good luck, I hope you get your quick sale. It helps to be a bit philosophical - if you don't get the house you want, there might be an even better one by the time you are ready!
Wallybird.