House Network review

sturgeon

I've previously posted about my saga of selling my flat (East London/Essex way) and decided to use an online EA. I was miffed after three local EA's visited and were quoting up to 2% fee plus VAT, which was up to 10 x the £595 I paid. As some of the threads I found were old, and as I've just exchanged (and they ask me to submit feedback), I thought I'd copy/paste my review here for reference:

If anyone was to sign up you get a 5% discount with my affiliate code IVENFMISMJ (I earn a referral fee), thanks.

"I was sceptical of using an online EA, however I was still convinced it was the way to go. I know personally that all of my property searches for my new place (and historically) have been through Rightmove. I don't have the time or inclination to visit Estate Agent offices and only see a small portion of properties on the market. The fee was incredibly reasonable versus some percentage fees I was quoted by EA's-I saw 3 of them before I decided to use House Network. I was annoyed by the fact I know that my area is luckily very sought after, and I was selling a fairly new build flat in immaculate condition-they all said it'd sell itself so why pay up to 5 x the fee?

The home visit was professional as were the photos and description. I really liked the fact I could edit my own photos and description, as well as the selling price, when required and learned from other local listings and the way things displayed on the portals how to write it up to maximise my exposure. The day after the listing went live, I started to get viewing requests which was encouraging. The sale price was high versus competitors, yet justified, however regardless as things weren't moving super fast I reduced the price to 'offers in excess of' a week or so later. That really ramped up the interest and I had booked in solid viewings from that Friday night to Saturday, resulting in 5-6 offers all over asking price. HN were really helpful to assist me to make sense of these and take it to best and final offers, carefully advising me which offers were best overall in terms of viability.

It has taken a long time to exchange but that's not the fault of House Network. They were easy to contact whenever required using the ticket system, online chat (i used once) and mainly the phone calls-always calling me back or emailing me with the required update. The only downside really was that my 'personal negotiator' Aimee was non existent from start to finish, no idea if she had left the company but I was allocated a replacement that would change daily. This meant that when I contacted HN, I felt that the history of my sale wasn't known until they brought it all up on the system, which is a downside versus a traditional EA-albeit a minor one.

I really do think high street EA's are updated-not that the service isn't high, yet their fees are excessive for today's market and world of online portals. I'd definitely use HN again and would recommend it-it was such a huge saving (£595 versus the max quoted , and a really professional service all round."