Buying house directly from owner

eloy7

I am new to the UK real estate market. As I see, all houses are marketed by real estate agents. Even when I tried classified ads, they are posted by real estate agents.

Am I in a wrong track OR it is not common in the UK to sell a property without real estate agents?

princeofpounds

Most people use estate agents, yes.


There are a few 'virtual' estate agents where it's basically the owner doing all the legwork. That has become a bit more common.


Very occasionally you might see a private advert, more common for holiday homes in national papers, occasionally for normal homes in the local papers. Tiny fraction though.

eloy7

Thanks for the clarification. Could you please name one or two the so-called virtual estate agents, as I can further explore.

Cheeky_Monkey

Just Google Virtual Estate Agents in your area

Mojisola

Why don't you want to go through an EA? It's the vendor who pays the EA, not the purchaser so it won't cost you anything.

G_M

I've always been bemused by the concept of 'real estate agents'. What are the pretend ones?

eloy7

Mojisola wrote: »

Why don't you want to go through an EA? It's the vendor who pays the EA, not the purchaser so it won't cost you anything.

Not always! Indeed, I wanted to open a new thread and ask this. Many houses are offered in auction, and agents ask for auction/administrative feel of GBP 6,000 to be paid by buyer.

DandelionPatrol

G_M wrote: »

I've always been bemused by the concept of 'real estate agents'. What are the pretend ones?

The rest, which is most of them.

Mojisola

eloy7 wrote: »

Not always! Indeed, I wanted to open a new thread and ask this. Many houses are offered in auction, and agents ask for auction/administrative feel of GBP 6,000 to be paid by buyer.

Auction fees aren't the same thing as an EA contract to sell.

Davesnave

Many people sell their houses without agents, but this isn't always easy to spot, because there may be no overt advertising.

When we sold our first house, it was a private sale to someone who knew a neighbour. We just let it be known that we wanted to move and the local grapevine did the rest. In that instance we lost our first buyer, so it was the person with first refusal who purchased.

We also bought privately at that time. Friends revealed at a pub lunch that they wanted to sell-up and move, so we took a few weeks to see if we could better their house, and as we couldn't, we bought it.

When we decided to sell that house 21 years later, we found private buyers in a matter of weeks. Unfortunately, that was at the start of the Crash and our buyers lost their self cert mortgage with Northern Rock....

Cue the first proper involvement with estate agents in 30 years.

More recently, we've sold some land privately and been approached by a friend about buying sporting rights (which we can't afford.)

'Under the radar' selling goes on all the time, especially in desirable areas.

Davesnave

Mojisola wrote: »

Auction fees aren't the same thing as an EA contract to sell.

I'm not certain, but the OP may also be referring to the 'modern auction' method of selling, which has been featured by a few agents in the last few years.