House Selling - Money Saving Tips

yrneh

Just about to put my house on the market. Great Tips , But what do you know about putting the house on the market yourself

Marcus wrote: »

Greetings all. I’ve been using this site for a while now and have managed to save us a small fortune. Years ago I was an estate agent so I thought I’d see is I could write some bits and bobs in relation to my experiences in the hope that it might save people some cash.

Selling Your House

Methods to Save Money

1) Agents Fees
a. All Estate Agent Fees are negotiable. First, check through the local property paper. See which agents get the most business. Are any members of the NAEA. Busy agents who are members of the NAEA would be my first choices. Select the best 3 or 4 agents and phone them up as potential buyers. See what service you get over a week or so as a buyer - that way you’ll get an idea of how they will market and present your property. A good proactive, busy and well managed agent will still have time and resources to post/email you details and phone you with new properties.

Then get them all to Value your property. Tell each valuer that you have other valuations (BUT NEVER TELL THEM WHAT VALUATIONS OTHER AGENTS HAVE GIVEN YOU - AS THEY’LL MANIPULATE THEIR OWN VALUATIONS) and that you are looking for a fee of 1% with no lock-ins. Most agents will try to lock you in - so that if you instruct them to take your property off the market you will not contractually be able to re-market with another agent for up to 8 weeks (especially with corporates). Make sure you get this down to 1 week after written notice. If you are locked in and you then sell your property through another agent you will get sued for the fees.

Agents are sales persons - they will give you great reasons to lock you in and charge you more... but they also need your business - thus you have the power to ask for and get these things.

b. Once your property is up for sale keep an eye on your agent - mystery shop them ie call them up, give a false name etc. and tell them you are looking for a property that matches your own property’s description - see if they push for you to view your property - are they positive and energetic?

The Duel/Multi-Agency myth.
If you become unhappy with your agent’s efforts it may be time to sack them or go multi agency. Tell an agent that you wish more than one agent to market your property and they’ll try and push up the fees to staggering amounts (2.5%+!!).
Tactics - tell your current agent that you wish for other agents to market your property. Tell them that you’ll keep them as an agent only if they will keep your fees at 1%. If they will not, then sack them (you should only be locked in for a week). I’ve never known an agent not to back down in this situation - they’d lose potential business if they let you go.
Now go to some other agents - probably the other agents on your original list - and tell them that “my agent has agreed to let me go multi-agency and my current fees are 1% - would you like to also market my property at 1% multi-agency?” You can guess what the answer will be...

A 1 % saving on the average cost of a property in the UK (currently £150000) will save you £1500 before VAT.

Duel Agency means you’re marketing with 2 agents - multi agency means you’re with more than two. Agents will try and charge you more for either of these - especially in the case of multi.



2) Solicitor Fees
During you initial enquiries with estate agents, ask them for several recommendations each of good conveyancers or solicitors. You don’t just want the name of the firm, but also the name of the specific solicitor/conveyancer. Remember, some agents will have ‘arrangements’ with some solicitors and some will even have their own - so be warned. A good rule of thumb would be to approach solicitors (by name) who have been recommended by different agents - although some solicitors will have arrangements with more than one agent.

Phone the best solicitors and ask for written confirmation of their charges. Take note of how they treat you - do they speak in plain English, are they friendly and do you get their details as promised the next day. And once again - their fees are negotiable - there’s no reason not to ask your favourite contender to shave £xxx off of their fees if you have evidence of more competitive quotes from other solicitors... they may say “no chance” - in which case you need to make a decision as to whether or not the extra charges are really worth it.

A solicitor can make or break deals for you so shop around. It’s very hard to change solicitors once they start the conveyancing process for you... and it will cost you!

And finally - avoid fee busting corporate conveyancing firms - they will most likely slow down the conveyancing process - these are normally call centre and internet based firms. They can save you as much as £500... but as stingy as I am I would never use them.



I hope this is of use to you and I hope that my info is still correct.
I’ll see if I can write something for buyers when dealing with agents and the like.

Regards
Marcus

aleo1203

Great article! Thanks Marcus and yrneh for reseting the article.

tonsai

I found this web site where you can sell / advertise your home for free. Not sure if there is a catch though http://www.moveandmortgage.co.uk

nickms161

A lot of people seem to be getting into a panic over the Home Information Packs (HIP). There is a very quick and simple solution to avoid needing a HIP - put your property on the market before the end of May! If you sell before the end of the year, you won't need one at all.

Marketing a property DOES NOT have to mean registering with an estate agent. You can simply publicly market your home...on the internet is an easy and obvious method and there are many sites offering this now....e.g. https://www.hiphipaway.co.uk for £19.95

tdibaja

I don't think there's gonna be a way around the energy performance certificates, wherever you sell a property... It's a requirement under the EC Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. Unless they take it out of the HIPs, as I've seen discussed on some sites.

___________________________________
Properazzi - the property search engine
http://www.properazzi.com

kushil

Can I recommend my conveyancing solicitors in London called easylawyers.co.uk when I sold my property.

They have an arrangement with Dickinson Dees to carry out their conveyancing work.

They did the whole conveyancing including VAT and disbursements for a fixed fee of £400!

That's right everything for £400 with no hidden extras that others wanted to charge such as mortgage transaction fee or a solicitors indemnity fee.

This was nearly £200 cheaper than the quotes I was getting from the estate agents recommended solicitors.

The solicitors I used told me that you have to right to know how much introducer fee or commission that the solicitor is paying the estate agent.

Cinders2001

tonsai wrote: »

I found this web site where you can sell / advertise your home for free. Not sure if there is a catch though http://www.moveandmortgage.co.uk

"YOUR AD IS FREE if you are happy to have a no obligation chat with the Move And Mortgage team about your mortgage options. If you don’t have a mortgage need or wish to make your own arrangements then you simply make your ONE-OFF £20 OPT OUT FEE (via paypal) which advertises your property on the MoveAndMortgage site for AS LONG AS YOU NEED"

That's the only 'catch' I can see.

thiana

Thankyou, I found your tips usefull.

Regards Paula

nollag2006

Some tips for valuing your house here:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=468427

Blobster

I think my husband made a big boo boo!
We have just put our house on the market and my husband stupidly signed with the first agent - they had valued our house at 15000 more than we had anticipated (going by other sales in the area etc) and being impressed by that he signed, not realising we would be completely tied in for 12 weeks. however when another agent came around he valued it 8000 higher than that, was much more professional and made us feel much more comfortable with selling the house with him, we explained about our error in judgement with the other company and he said it would be fine and we signed with them also (both now on sole agency basis). Immediately we went down to the first EA and cancelled the contract verbally and in writing (less that an hour had passed and we assumed there would be some sort of cooling off period) they accepted the cancellation and we heard nothing more.
some 3 weeks later we are now receiving phone calls frome the 1st agent stating that they will still be entitled to their fees and we cannot cancel our contract until week 10 giving 2 weeks notice - there is no mention of this week 10 thing in the contract.
having read the OEA website it states that we should receive written notice of our cancellation from the agent stating all fees owed and cancellation date - we have not received this, there are also a couple of other things on there they have breached and i just want to know where we stand as they actually have not put any work into selling our property and are still claiming 1.5% for the priviledge.

Help me please :mad: