Great Hunt: Have you sold your home using an online estate agent?

Teen57

Has anyone used Tepilo (Sarah Beany's Website)? If so, what are your thoughts and views?


I am having to selling my family home after 27 years and have been told that the Estate Agents cost about £4/5,000. Since I only have 50% of the sale of the property I was looking to reduce this amount by going online and doing it myself.....

parkview094

We've just sold through housesimple and had a version of our story on a related Channel 4 show. ahem.

We initially tried selling through a local high-street agent, but after 3 months with only 9 viewings we had no offers and very little feedback. Our suspicion was that we'd just gotten unlucky with the agent we'd chosen, so thought we would give on-line a go.

We were looking at around a £10,000 saving in fees by going online, so decided to plough a little bit of that money into some cosmetic improvements so our house would no longer need "immediate complete redecotation"

Housesimple were skeptical about us keeping the same asking price, but we'd done lots of research on the area and were confident that we were, if anything, underpricing our property.

Within a week of going online with housesimple we had an asking price offer and 7 other viewings to cancel as we'd secured a good buyer and weren't interested in running an 'auction'.

Our previous house we'd sold with a highstreet agent who was excellent and secured us offer within the first week as well.

So, I would definitely recommend trying the on-line route with a few caveats.

1. The savings have to be significant enough to warrant it.
2. Pricing is everything. You have to have a realistic market price for your house. I'm sure online agents can take a reasonable stab at a valuation, but housesimple certainly made strong suggestions we should reduce our price. We had no comporable recent sales in the area so had to compare to a Zoopla estimate and other similar properties that were being marketed. We had a number of local highstreet agents round to value the house, but the range of prices we got was alarming. Whilst I'm sure many a good estate agent will provide a realistic valuation, there's always the risk that some will offer a hiked valuation to get your business whilst others may undervalue to ensure a simple and quick sale. We were very wary of undervaluing / reducing the price of the house as ultimately if we'd ended up staying, the mortgage companies tend to use a number of factors including the zoopla valuation which depends on recent asking prices. No easier way to cause a %LTV problem for a mortgage than an 'attactive/quick sale asking prrice'. For a standard house in a high-turn-over area, I'm sure an online agent could take as good a stab at a valuation as any, but for other circumstances, it makes sense in my opinion to do your own research.
3. With the online route you have to show people round yourselves. This was also true for our highstreet agent, so nothing to choose there. The fact I could get hold of the online agent 7 days a week and until late in the evening was a huge bonus for us. In our area, many of the local agents still aren't open on Sundays!
4. On the flip-side, things like photography, valuations etc could only be conducted by housesimple mon-fri 9-5, so we had to take a day off to get us up and running, whereas the local agent could offer us a weekend or evening appointment.
5. Key hand-over is also a consideration. With no local agent to 'leave keys' with on completion, some careful thought is required here.

Finally, a topic that hasn't been discussed that much yet is conveyancing. We decided to try an online conveyancor this time and I have to say it's been a breath of fresh air. A solicitor I can actually get hold of! The law society run a quality conveyancing scheme, so we picked an online company that was signed up to this and I couldn't recommend them strongly enough.

trevjl

My son recently made an offer for a house which was rejected, the EA then told them not too make another offer until they had sold their flat. (I rang them and put them straight on that in no uncertain terms). Eventually they made another offer and spoke to the seller, she told them that the EA had told her that they were not good buyers as they would take ages to sell their "overpriced flat"
And who do you think valued their flat ??? Yep, the very same estate agent !!
They put theirs on with Emoove and have now have an accepted offer after less than a week. Emove have so far been great.
Mann & Co - wouldn't P on them if they were on fire

BroncoBill

After bitter disappointment with our local Estate Agent with very few viewings and very little support or feedback, we were delighted to find the efficiency and speed of the HouseNetwork "system" was excellent beyond belief. Providing one is able to manage a very simple on-line account and carry out viewings oneself (which we were doing anyway!!), the control over the selling process was both very efficient and very satisfying. Having waited a week for our local Estate Agent (who was probably the best one in our town) to make a simple change of wording, HouseNetwork's excellent system made it very easy to change words or pictures and speedy regular uploading to portals such as Rightmove/Zoopla etc made it super efficient and a joy to work with. Arranging viewings was very simple and efficient and obtaining Feedback for us was super and something our local EA was unable to achieve. Ashley and Kristina, our account managers, were very friendly and helpful and saw the process through to sale personally and there was always someone available to talk to if required. Must not forget the setting up process, excellent photographs and floorplan (which was extra with our local EA!!) and an excellent description had the account up and running very quickly. Overall, unbelievable service for a very good price, we would have no hesitation in recommending HouseNetwork and have done so on a number of occasions already. Thank you for taking away much of the worry of selling and buying and for saving us such a lot of money. Good luck for the future to everyone at HouseNetwork.

buglawton

Ho hum. Now just think, if a business were to incentivise people to post glowing reviews, would take your custom to such a business?

basscadette

Well we've sold though house network and they've been fantastic - really good service. It's a gamble - we may not have sold and had to pay the fees anyway, but we've saved about £700 and House Network are still acting for us in progressing the sale. Amazing value over traditional agents.

Only problem is in places like where we live (oop north) people can be wary of anything new and different. We don't know how many poeple it put off but do thing we may have had more viewings if we'd used a familiar local company.

Saying that, I'd choose them again any time even if it did put a few people off as the benefits outweight the potential downside.

Hoof_Hearted

buglawton wrote: »

Ho hum. Now just think, if a business were to incentivise people to post glowing reviews, would take your custom to such a business?

I don't think HouseNetwork need to get people to post positive reviews. There's a whole thread about the company on here, which is overwhelmingly positive.

My experience was similar to BroncoBill's and I clearly don't get out enough as I have rather a lot of posts....

G6JPG

Does anyone have experience of using such agents (or the conventional sort sort for that matter!) to sell a park home? (For those unfamiliar with the term - they're what lots of people still call "mobile homes" or "static caravans", though both those expressions are way out of date and give the wrong impression; think "luxury bungalow". The main difference is that you own the building but not the land, but you do own [it's part of what you sell/buy] the right to live there for ever [with certain caveats].) Selling such a home seems a lot simpler than an ordinary one (I'm in my second such - I just like the lifestyle; they tend to be quiet places in pleasant locations); there just doesn't seem to have been any mention in this thread.

googler

Newbie2014 wrote: »

Good Morning

I work for an online Estate Agent and would be more than happy to assist if anyone has any queries that I can help with.

Read the forum rules, and apply to the mods to post as a Company Representative, then.

buglawton

G6JPG wrote: »

Does anyone have experience of using such agents (or the conventional sort sort for that matter!) to sell a park home?...

Actually with a park home there will likely be a highly restrictive covenant on how you can sell it. More complicated to sell than a leasehold flat I would say. If the buyer needs a mortgage then you're in trouble. Easier to buy than sell I would think. If you are on your 2nd, how did the sale of the 1st go?