purple brick

eddddy

tonytee wrote: »

Online estate agents sell a lower percentage of property than traditional estate agents. I can link to a report if needed.

Can you provide the link to that report.

Thanks.

statex

Just had the agent round to give a valuation. He gave me all the information about upfront fee or pay after sale but you must use their conveyancing service and the 10 month payment if no sale. I am not an expert but conveyancing service seems a little expensive for a seller what does the lawyer have to do? No searches I would think, they also charge £49 for each money transfer plus £120 for something else but I cant remember what it was as it is on my other laptop.I noticed on the bottom of the quote that PB receive about £400 in commission. The agent was very professional he asked me if I wanted him to do the viewings (£120 extra) and if I wanted to negotiate any offers or leave it to him. He has had 15 years experience as a high street estate agent before working for PB.

The service is new but like all new things new there are teething problems.I believe it all depends on the agent and how professional he or she is. How many perspective buyer actually look in an estate agents window as opposed to the internet. I am not sure if I will give it a punt or not but for £798 I may give them a try if they fail to sell within a couple of months I will use a high street agent in the spring and negotiate a discount.They are desperate for properties to sell in my area. One consolation I will be able to claim it as a cost against my Capital Gains Tax .

Should they turn out to be a load of SHoneT, I will be pestering Martin Lewis to publicise the fact and post on every forum I can find.

Does anyone know if it is possible to do your own conveyancing or have the lawyers got it all sown up?

One other thing that I have noticed is that most of the PB knockers only have one post on this forum.

fashionvictim

One property up the road sold via Purple bricks and another round the corner has one of their boards up too. I have seen both on Rightmove.

I sold through a different online company, who don't do TV adverts. They did an online valuation and sent someone to take photos. They didn't have many properties listed, and I found them quite rude, so I'm not going to recommend. Plus on one occasion I said I could do any time all day before 7pm. So they then booked them for 7.30pm :mad: But anyway they listed us on Rightmove & Zoopla.

I paid about £700 so you get what you pay for. And I had a lot of viewers and under offer in 3 days. However this is not because of them but supply and demand in our price bracket, plus our property is fully done up

I had two local Estate agents value my property first but I know I would rather save the money on selling.

SmlSave

As estate agents they don't appear too bad

But don't sign the lower fee contract using their solicitors, they are truly dismal!

Thrugelmir

jezame1 wrote: »

They also state that the payment is to be collected by a company called “Close Brothers”, which sounds rather ominous.

Perfectly legitimate bank. I was wondering how they manage their cashflow if nothing is paid upfront. You've provided the answer.

Majienco

It's interesting to see the number of good reviews on its website considering if you dig deeper, you only find bad reviews.

Personally, as a first time buyer (meaning I don't have anyone to compare them to) the viewing bit of the journey was nice. I could make my appointments online, and it was swift. So I guess you have to have a local agent at purblebricks that is on the ball.

Once I went through the process, my agent did a disappearing act, no check-ins to see how it was going, and then I was left with call-centre. They get back to me swiftly, but because of the chain mixup pallava, I had a bad experience, and also their conveyancing firm are a joke according to my solicitor. Oh, and when I asked the sellers they said the same.

But the first part - the booking viewings bit was really nice and the call centre has always gotten back to me, albeit without any decent news or updates / support.

stacey.abrahams

I listed my property with PurpleBricks in January of this year. Unfortunately within 19 days of listing I had a financial issue that was out of my control resulting in me no longer being able to sell. When I reported this to my agent and asked if I could remove my property from the market he informed me I was still liable to pay the full fee of over £850 despite being on the market for less than 3 weeks and completely contradicting my consumer rights. I was completely unaware of this clause but the agent simply told me I should have read through the terms and conditions and continued to become aggressive and rant at me leaving no room for response. When I did eventually reply to him that he had not given me any terms and conditions, paperwork of any kind or even explained this charge to me in any way, he became more aggressive towards me. I explained that he had simply talked me through the listing process and instructed me to tick certain boxes without disclosing that this was me agreeing to terms I knew nothing about. Yes I was naïve but I was under the impression I could trust this man as my agent, and that any kind of agreement would be brought to my attention and explained to me before signing or as they do it, ticking a box! This particular agent became even more aggressive when I stated I was going to seek advice from the ombudsman and finally laughed at me saying "read the terms and conditions you stupid b**ch!" before terminating the phone call. I was utterly floored by this display of unprofessional behaviour and blatant rudeness! I can not put into words my horror of this experience as I would never in a million years have expected this to happen or to come from a man who was so charismatic and helpful in the first instance we met. I can only warn future vendors to please read everything thoroughly and make sure you know your stuff when using this company to market your home. Also, check out other agents as they're are plenty of online agents if that's what you need, not to mention 90% of other agents do not charge you anything unless they actually sell your home no matter how long you are on the market with them. Don't be fooled by the low cost either as other agents can offer similar deals and after all the added little charges that purplebricks put on, the cost is pretty much on par with most high street agents.

Tristanita

15 Feb 2016

I have just started the sales process with Purple Bricks. So far its been very straightforward.

• My local guy 'Simon' came, valued, measured and took photos 3 weeks ago. With no pressure to instruct and no follow up calls chasing for instruction – just 1 email.

• I instructed them yesterday. I named my own price.

• I did not use their conveyancing service - it was nearly twice the price of my local solicitor. I paid the fee upfront (if you pay after sale you are committed to using their conveyancing service - which apart from being expensive has had rather poor reviews).

• Got the draft advertisement for my approval this morning.

• Had email from Simon this afternoon asking when I want ad to go live (this weekend) and reminding me to set my online diary so they can see my preferred viewing times.

• Set my viewing availability in online diary. Tues & Thurs 6pm – 8pm and Saturdays 10am – 2.00pm. If a viewer insists on appointment outside these hours they will text message the request.

• Had call from their EPC people this afternoon, who were happy to do EPC inspection at my convenience, between 8 and 9am before I leave for work - fantastic (though I know I could have got it a cheaper elsewhere, I chose the convenience over price).

Can’t fault service so far, despite the fact some reviews have caned them. Let’s see what happens when ad goes live.....



22 Feb 2016

Update on my last message, the advert has now been 'Live' for 3 days. And judging by the response there has been no problem with people logging in and arranging their viewings.

I received an email from Simon first thing this morning advising number of viewings booked (though I knew this as I have been checking regularly).

My PurpleBricks diary looks like this (just for the 1st open day - I have had 21 viewings confirmed in total over the last 3 days).

Saturday 05 March 2016
Open day: 10:00 - 16:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS edit

10:00 - 10:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
10:00 - 10:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
10:00 - 10:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
10:00 - 10:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
10:00 - 10:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
11:00 - 11:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
11:00 - 11:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
11:00 - 11:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
12:00 - 12:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
12:00 - 12:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
12:00 - 12:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
12:00 - 12:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
12:30 - 13:00 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
12:30 - 13:00 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
13:00 - 13:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
13:30 - 14:00 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view
14:00 - 14:30 Mornington Grove, London, E3 4NS view

dc197

Tristanita, are you sure you don't work for Purple Bricks? You joined this site today, and your one and only post has been to praise this company.

Tristanita

No I don'twork for Purple Brick - I researched the Purple Bricks reviews before signing the contract, and after reading this thread and a very similar one on MumsNet was quite worried about using them (especially when it was suggested they delete bad reviews from trustpilot - very unscrupulous) - but the saving won out and I took the gamble.


I find people are very quick to criticize bad service, but if they get a bogstandard 'what they expected' service they don't bother. My fee was the higher £1,200, but I'm saving nearly £6,000 on the 2% my local agent quoted me. I just thought it would be good to share the other side of the story.