housenetwork - a review

Hoof_Hearted

I believe you can also add your own photos if you want to.

If You are not in a rush and are happy to conduct your own viewings, using an online agent seems like a no brainer. The savings are huge when measured against a high street agent.

No matter how much the regular agents on here try to put them down, I think it is the future of house selling.

roi354

Hi all, first post (been reading and using info from here for years though - cheeky!) and I'm hovering over the 'buy now' button on HouseNetwork but I have to ask this:

Will I be sent loads of messers who have no intention of buying? Do HN vet people before they arrange for them to view a property? I wonder whether they think getting more through your door is the way to sell it.

TIA,
Rob

Hoof_Hearted

roi354 wrote: »

Hi all, first post (been reading and using info from here for years though - cheeky!) and I'm hovering over the 'buy now' button on HouseNetwork but I have to ask this:

Will I be sent loads of messers who have no intention of buying? Do HN vet people before they arrange for them to view a property? I wonder whether they think getting more through your door is the way to sell it.

TIA,
Rob

No HN don't vet prospective purchasers at the viewing stage as far as I know. However, once you have offers, they will find out what the prospective buyer's position is. Unlike high street agents, they do not force people to see their mortgage adviser.

We didn't have many time wasters. There were three who knew it wasn't what they were looking for, but the rest seemed quite sincere and we did have a number of offers. You find out loads as you do the viewings anyway.

If fact, the person who eventually bought the house was one whom I thought was not particularly interested at the first viewing.

hotpot1000

My very first viewer thru HN ended up buying mine, I wouldnt say I was messed about with time wasters.
I am recommending them to other family members

you get discount with a code......mine is PQXALIGMWQ

Davesnave

Hoof_Hearted wrote: »

I belive you can also add your own photos if you want to.

No matter how much the regular agents on here try to put them down, I think it is the future of house selling.

I am not a regular agent, or any kind of agent, and I agree HN may be good for some people. Unfortunately, those it might be best for, aren't necessarily those self-selecting at the moment.

Owners do get the chance to upload photos, and boy, don't they just! Too often, however, there's overkill, so one is left with too little to wonder about, and sometimes, an overwhelming impression of the vendors bad taste. The idea of photos is to tantalise, not make prospective purchasers wonder how much it will cost to sort things out. The first step is to get them through the door.

Of course, a rubbish agent will take equally bad photos, though not so many. Often, we gave a property the benefit of the doubt, drove 100 miles to view & regretted it. If there had been 40 photos we'd probably not have bothered.

roi354 wrote: »

Will I be sent loads of messers who have no intention of buying? Do HN vet people before they arrange for them to view a property? I wonder whether they think getting more through your door is the way to sell it.
TIA,
Rob

Yes, it's quite likely you'd make an ideal HN candidate, if you think that your property is so special people need 'vetting' just to see it. Maybe you are in London & the Home Counties, where selling is still relatively plain sailing, but if not, expect to revise your thoughts on this.

Yes, you will get time wasters, but the best way to deal with them is to expect nothing from anyone, because at least half of those who "Oooh" and "Ah" enthusiatically will be liars, even if their intentions are noble. Emotions on both sides, and especially yours, should be in neutral.

As someone just said above, quite often, the folk who eventually buy appear to leave their emotions on the doorstep. I know we did. When you are seriously thinking, "Fits the bill, but we'll have to haggle hard," you don't tend to enthuse about the wallpaper or the turquoise bidet!

roi354

Davesnave wrote: »

Yes, it's quite likely you'd make an ideal HN candidate, if you think that your property is so special people need 'vetting' just to see it. Maybe you are in London & the Home Counties, where selling is still relatively plain sailing, but if not, expect to revise your thoughts on this.

Yes, you will get time wasters, but the best way to deal with them is to expect nothing from anyone, because at least half of those who "Oooh" and "Ah" enthusiatically will be liars, even if their intentions are noble. Emotions on both sides, and especially yours, should be in neutral.

As someone just said above, quite often, the folk who eventually buy appear to leave their emotions on the doorstep. I know we did. When you are seriously thinking, "Fits the bill, but we'll have to haggle hard," you don't tend to enthuse about the wallpaper or the turquoise bidet!

My property if far from 'special' but you're correct in that I do live in London & the Home Counties - East London to be precise - where the market seems to be relatively buoyant still. By vetting I simply mean that the prospective buyer has the means to actually complete on a deal i.e. mortgage agreed in principle, any property required to sell is under offer or at the very least on the open market.
Two local agents have been to value my property already and one made the comment that "HN will send loads of people who have no intention of buying" (which I've paraphrased) and I took it with a pinch of salt initially owing to his bias, but it stuck in my mind, hence the question.

When I sold my previous house the people who I thought I'd never hear from again actually offered full asking price via the agent within minutes of leaving. During the viewing they asked no questions, made no comments other than the odd occasional 'hmmm' and a final 'thank you' once they had apparently seen enough. I was gobsmacked frankly, but proves the point that you can't always read people's emotions.

For the record I think that for every hit on rightmove et all from someone actively looking to buy I'd bet there are 100 sussing things out for their own reasons (looking to gauge the value of theirs, gathering ideas, dreaming (I've done all three!)) and any one of them could be a potential buyer. None of them would actually pick up a phone and call a local agent to be put on their mailing list. That's why I'm confident HouseNetwork will work for me (plus I stand to save £2000 at asking price - over the best deal locally which was 0.75%!!).


Rob

Hoof_Hearted

Davesnave wrote: »

Owners do get the chance to upload photos, and boy, don't they just! Too often, however, there's overkill, so one is left with too little to wonder about, and sometimes, an overwhelming impression of the vendors bad taste. The idea of photos is to tantalise, not make prospective purchasers wonder how much it will cost to sort things out. The first step is to get them through the door.

I think one of the advantages is that the vendor has complete control of what is put online. He/she can add/subtract photos, change the description and so on. The latter has to be vetted by HN as it has to be truthful and accurate, but we changed a fair bit of ours.

I think you are right about the number of photos -- too many is not a good idea.

Hoof_Hearted

roi354 wrote: »

Two local agents have been to value my property already and one made the comment that "HN will send loads of people who have no intention of buying" (which I've paraphrased) and I took it with a pinch of salt initially owing to his bias, but it stuck in my mind, hence the question.

I think you need to take anything an agent says with a pinch of salt. There may be some people about who are not sincere and are just seeing what's available in the area but as long as you have people who want to buy as well and you sell, it doesn't really matter that much.

jw83113

Hi I'm new here but as I exchanged contracts on the sale of my house yesterday and used housenetwork I can hopefully give you some useful advice.

The way that it works when a viewer wants to view your house is that they contact housenetwork and ask to view, they normally ask about the buyers position, ie if they have something to sell, first time buyer, whether they have mortgage agreement in principal etc. They will then contact you and arrange a suitable date. You are free to say no if you think that the person who is requesting to view is not suitable. Personally I let anyone who was interested view as you never know how things will progress. Sometimes people who have yet to sell may sell quickly, and sometimes the 'perfect' cash buyer can mess you around later to best to keep an open mind with people.

I had some conventional high street agents round and wasn't particularly impressed by their service and shocked by their commision rates so decided to have a go with HN. It was the best decision I could have made. The photographer who came round was fantastic and took loads of really good photos and the description was excellent. We had a load of viewers in the first few weeks and was sold STC within a few weeks.

I was a bit sceptical before signing up so went for the more expensive option of paying minimum up front and a final fee, this worked out about 1000 inc VAT for the options I chose. If I had payed all the cash up front it would have been about 500. It still saved me thousands though and the service was fantastic. If they can carry on with this level of service at the same prices then all the high street agents should be very worried indeed. Most people look for property on rightmove, zoopla etc these days and rarely look in shop windows etc especially in the south east where there is so many different agents. This really is the future of house selling.

In case anyones wondering I have no connection whatsoever with the firm. Just passing on some information that I think is worth sharing.

roi354 wrote: »

My property if far from 'special' but you're correct in that I do live in London & the Home Counties - East London to be precise - where the market seems to be relatively buoyant still. By vetting I simply mean that the prospective buyer has the means to actually complete on a deal i.e. mortgage agreed in principle, any property required to sell is under offer or at the very least on the open market.
Two local agents have been to value my property already and one made the comment that "HN will send loads of people who have no intention of buying" (which I've paraphrased) and I took it with a pinch of salt initially owing to his bias, but it stuck in my mind, hence the question.

When I sold my previous house the people who I thought I'd never hear from again actually offered full asking price via the agent within minutes of leaving. During the viewing they asked no questions, made no comments other than the odd occasional 'hmmm' and a final 'thank you' once they had apparently seen enough. I was gobsmacked frankly, but proves the point that you can't always read people's emotions.

For the record I think that for every hit on rightmove et all from someone actively looking to buy I'd bet there are 100 sussing things out for their own reasons (looking to gauge the value of theirs, gathering ideas, dreaming (I've done all three!)) and any one of them could be a potential buyer. None of them would actually pick up a phone and call a local agent to be put on their mailing list. That's why I'm confident HouseNetwork will work for me (plus I stand to save £2000 at asking price - over the best deal locally which was 0.75%!!).


Rob

stokey1

I've also used house network to sell my northeast London flat. Was a fraction of the cost of a local agent, most of whom wanted 3%, or 1.5% for an exclusivity deal. Instead we paid a flat fee of £525 i think.
Roi, i didn't really experience many time wasters. We had around 15 viewers over 2 weekends, 5 of whom put in offers. There were a couple of people who didn't seem that interested, and one who was put off by the lack of outside space- although i thought it was clear from floorplan that there was none, but all our viewers had mortgage agreements in principle in place.
Agree its not for everyone, market is very buoyant where we are so to some extent we would have sold quickly anyway imo. But all the more reason not to pay vast amounts to an agent. We were targeting first time buyers, who tend to use websites to search anyway. We ended up selling to the first couple who viewed.