housenetwork - a review

not_loaded

Grolsch30 wrote: »

Hi,
Right we've taken the plunge and have gone with Housenetwork…
…I had asked for an offer regarding the conveyancing and promptly received their offer which was £348 plus vat for a Freehold property (add £125 plus vat for Leasehold).
So all in all the start has been a good and courteous and proffesional experiance.
Many thanks to everyone on this thread for their coments and experiances, advice etc it has helped me to come to this decision.
Cheers now

Our HN guy was brilliant during his visit – absolutely no complaints, so I’m sure it’ll go smoothly for you. Since signing up we’ve found them courteous and efficient with their contact. They’ll usually phone you with viewing requests, keeping the viewer on the other line for immediate confirmation. You can also follow your property viewings/feedback/appointments etc online 24/7 which is handy. Our viewers have also been highly complimentary about their attitude. Our last viewer said he’d requested two local viewings from conventional High Street EAs and had to chase them days later for the appointments!

gnimia wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit, but have a Q re housenetwork - veiwed a house through them last night (Vendor was a no-show, and tenant had no idea i was coming, but that wasnt HN's fault obviously)
How have people found buying through them, generally? I can see the advantages from a sellers POV, but is it likely to add any (extra!) issues for buyers? Cheers!

Maybe a lack of communication somewhere? I hope you reported back to HN on the problem. If it was down to the vendor he/she needs to wake up. Not even telling the tenant was daft.

As a viewer, the day after viewing, you’ll get feedback requests by email and possibly phone. I’ve talked to the HN conveyancing team and they seem very on the ball, so I can’t imagine that following through to a purchase should be any different from other EAs. I hope a HN buyer comes along to add more to this for you.

RentonB

Just thought I'd update the forum on how my experience of HN has been since they started marketing my property just over two months ago. As I mentioned previously, I was very impressed with how they went about getting my house on the market (visit, photos, HIP, etc), and it was all very efficient.

So then it was a case of how they handled things once the house was on the market. First off I asked a friend to go through the process of arranging a viewing on the property to test the water - we were both really impressed by how the call was handled, and the test viewing was arranged within minutes whilst we were both on the phone. Since then I've not had the flood of viewers that I (naively) thought I might get, but rather a mixed result. Currently I've had six legitimate viewings arranged, three of which were no shows - one didn't turn up (feedback stated family emergency), and has not re-arranged, one cancelled earlier in the day due to work commitments (again not re-arranged), and one cancelled a few days before having tried the work commute from my town. Apart from the first one, I'm grateful for the notice given to me by the viewer, via HN, to tell me why they were cancelling.

The three viewers that turned up were actually very positive, although I only got feedback from HN on one (they really liked it, but wanted more space). My feeling is that the other two did not leave feedback due to, without sounding harsh, being a little older and maybe not regular users of email. In this instance HN had left a voice message with one, and tried to call back the other. Having been inundated with calls from local EA's whilst I'm looking at properties myself, it's easy to forgive people if they don't ring back with feedback on every house they view.

Overall then, I'm happy with the service I'm getting from HN. Yes I maybe have slight concerns that I might not be getting the same exposure as with a local EA, but I have friends in a similar position, and they aren't getting much interest either - it could just be the local market (mine is in the first time buyer price range). I have said to all of the local EA's that after 2/3 months I may well give one of them a chance, but I still think that being on Rightmove (and other internet sites) is the key to marketing my property. Incidentally, the three viewers I had were all from outside of my local area.

Anyway, I hope that my experience so far might help others decide whether or not to use HN, and will keep you posted..........

Grolsch30

HN came yesterday to do all the photos and 3d walkthrough thingy etc and again everything went seemless. It took just over an hour to do what he had to do so now we are waiting for the email comfirmation to enable us to look at and activate our house for sale.

not_loaded

We had quite a lot of word changes to make, so proof read carefully.

They will put up myriad photos for you, in fact every photo taken I think.

My suggestion is that you prune out the obviously unneeded ones, and to focus on the ‘wow’ rooms in your house. A lot of people say minimise the number of photos, but I feel you definitely want to have the ones that impress, so if the finished effect is good, go for it!

You can submit your own photos if you want. (email attach) So if you have fabulous views away from the house, they’ll add those on for you.

You can go back anytime you like to rearrange, delete or add photos, so I’d get the wording right and go live, changing the photos at your leisure. Good luck!

beccad

We're going through the final stages of selling our flat with HN (please keep your fingers crossed it'll all go through!) and we've not had any problems really. We had four viewigns on our flat, with the second person making a full asking price offer, with viewers three and four wanted to make offers also. We stopped taking viewings at that point. That's more to do with the local market I think, rather than anything particular that HN did! Best of all, though we've saved ourselves about £5k :j

I would say to pay attention to your target market, though. We had a two-bed flat to sell in an area of London that's affordable for first-time-buyers, so only having an online presence works absolutely fine for us. If you had a retirement bungalow to sell, then maybe not the best option!

Grolsch30

Our house has now gone live
We also had to change the wording and description but nothing major.
The response from Housenetwork when raising tickets with them has been very good and efficient.
All in all a very good service and experiance, see where it leads from here.... hopefully to a quick and easy sale

Contessa

I intend to use HN. Did people who used them decide the asking price themselves, or got valuations from local EA's? At the moment I'm decluttering and debating whether or not to spend quite a lot of money on repairs/tarting up my house so I'm not really sure what the value of my house might be (apart from what someone is prepared to pay!)

Grolsch30

Our house has just been live for 1 day and already have a viewing today @ midday

HN phoned me yesterday early evening saying that they had a viewing for me and asked if today was ok, they then phoned the interested party up to confirm.
A little while later I received an email confirmation of the arranged viewing.

Lets see how it goes.....

not_loaded

When they first arrive, ask them what they’re looking for in the property. It’s surprising what they say. You can hinge your spiel on what they tell you, eg: they have a dog, they have twelve kids etc.

My advice is don’t talk too much. For our early viewings we realised we overdid that.

Give them time to comment and ask questions.

I think it’s already been mentioned on this thread, but we made up a little brochure with a few photos, and lots of local info like the schools, transport, (see upmystreet) for them to take away. We also put a floor plan on there.

Good luck!

Grolsch30

Contessa wrote: »

I intend to use HN. Did people who used them decide the asking price themselves, or got valuations from local EA's? At the moment I'm decluttering and debating whether or not to spend quite a lot of money on repairs/tarting up my house so I'm not really sure what the value of my house might be (apart from what someone is prepared to pay!)

I had 3 estate agents round and they all came up with the same valuation more or less. We then took it all into consideration and decided what we put our house up for sale for.

---

First viewing went really positive. Viewer was on time and seemed very positive about our house, said she would come again with her hubby.
Awaiting feedback from HN now.

One thing maybe to check is that the lady who came to view said she was not given the house number of our property, don't know why but in future when HN call to arrange a viewing I will query this and make sure that they tell the prospective buyers the number.