House Selling - Money Saving Tips

hcb42

no, you would get 72K. Google gifted deposit or search on here though, not many lenders willing to lend I understand

laminki

7 and a half years later and this posting is still worth its weight in gold!
Cheers once again Marcus!

Rollininit

Hi, I'm posted on behalf of my boyfriend but he is about to sign up to housenetwork online estate agents. Has anyone had any experience with them? I know they list on rightmove, etc, so they seem pretty good, but it's difficult to believe that they can be just as good as street estate agents at a fraction of the price.

Sorry if this has already been written about, I did have a look though but too much to read! Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks
RII

mrpatel

I am a professional landlord and seller and have used many agents. I think what Marcus says is right, but nothing beats old fashioned word of mouth recommendation. I tended to ask friends and search for agent reviews, annoyingly most of them were from buyers and tenants which didn't give me a a rounded idea how the agent will perform for me as a landlord/seller. I recently used an agent in putney and discovered they were listed on a review website called

meetmyagent.co.uk

What i liked about it is it is very user friendly and quite reminds me in someways of tripadvisor. This is strictly for homeowners only. if you like the agent you can request valuation with them through the site I think the public should get behind websites like these so we can all see who the best estate agents are, and help other sellers/landlords find the best by reviewing ones we used. What I liked is the agents list voluntarily so you know its only the good ones that would want to list! we review so many services so why not estate agents?! I think the good agents deserve the majority of the business, sites like these allow us to choose the best of the best, can only be a good thing for us surely??

Regarding fees I tend to have agents on a scaled basis, so if they achieve asking price they get a certain fee like 1.5% for example then we scale the fee according to the price we achieve, works for me! But thanks Marcus you have given me some ideas!

Regards

Rajit

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

jamest5789

I just went through the process of selling my house which was a lot harder than expected.

I followed the advice of the original post on here but none of the local agents would budge from their 1.5% fees so I felt resigned to paying high fees but had a bit of a search online and decided to list my property on a few of the free listing sites and got an amazing 2 views over a month. Neither of which came to any fruition.

While looking to see what would be the best agent to go with begrudgingly willing to pay the 1.5% agent fee. I came across a local agent (newmove.co.uk) who was doing the same but for just £999 +VAT. You are required to do your own viewings but they will arrange them for you around times that suit and more importantly list your property on Rightmove, Zoopla and many other sites I have never heard of.

On further browsing I came across iSold which is another agent that is run by Tesco by the looks of it but that came out at £1,499.

Some further browsing on Google I came across Ownmove.com which does the same as newmove.co.uk although also includes floorplans as part of the package for £525 +VAT after speaking to them on the phone I was able to get a further 20% off and put my money down.

If you are willing to do your own viewings I would recommend using an online estate agent especially Ownmove.

essleweb

Well written and very beneficial post. Marcus you are great and full of knowledgeable person. Keep it up thanks a lot for this awesomely useful post.

nattyb1982

I have a question regarding selling my house so hope this is the best place to put it. I am currently on with 2 high street agents and one internet one - i have paid the internet one up front so wouldnt have any fees to pay if i sold through them. The two high street ones are charging quite a bit in fees - would cost me about £5k if sold the house for £220k. I have a couple coming for a 2nd viewing later, the saw the house from the road and searched on the internet to see who we were on with (we didnt have a board up at the time). The picked the 1st agent we were on with and rang them, the agent couldnt do the viewing so i did it myself, they are coming back today and once again the agency cant do the viewing so i am. I would love to sell but would total resent giving this agency £5k when they have literally done nothing to get this couple into my home (i have had no other viewings with them and have had a million problems with them up to now and nearly cancelled our contract with them). Anyway i want to ask the couple that if they are serious about making an offer that they do so through this internet agency, i then want to cancel my two high street agents and just have my internet one on. Where do i legally stand if these people were to buy through interent agency with the high street agents? nothing will happen for a few months anyway so i could dump both agents as im not happy with service and by the time the viewers are in a position to put an offer in (they still havent sold theirs) then i would only be on with one agent then anyway?
Hope this makes sense and someone can help?!

Many thanks

lynneinjapan

sainthalo wrote: »

£500 to someone to advertise on the rightmove website (this as far as i see is the biggest asset they are offering) is too much.

Rightmove is owned by 3 leading estate agents with a vested interest in preventing self sellers onto the website.

Someone should set up an online agency whereby the customer does as much of the work themselves including pictures etc so that we could access rightmove for £100-200.

johnno71 wrote: »

There are lots of private sale sites out there, with prices varying from free to around £150.

The problem with these is that they aren't allowed to list on the big property portals (Rightmove, Zoopla, etc) who have banned private sellers. :mad:

And because the six biggest portals get 90% plus of all buyer traffic this makes private selling not impossible, but very difficult - especially in this market.

The only way to get onto the major portals while avoiding full high street estate agent prices is to use an online estate agent. These are usually either fixed fee or based on a much smaller commission than a high street agent (typically 0.5% compared to 1.5-2.0% for high street).

This one claims to be the cheapest way to get on Rightmove:
http://www.janeearl.co.uk/
(Please note that I have no connection with them and can't vouch for their service.)

It is an online estate agent (so you can't use them if you're stuck in a sole agency contract) but they seem to provide everything that most sellers actually need. I'd say it's probably worth the cost just to get on Rightmove - even though they don't seem to advertise anywhere else besides their own site. There are so many private seller sites out there and the sites that they list on usually aren't very easy to search efficiently for what you want.

thesolutionfinder

I new I would find the best of both worlds. Cheap access to rightmove - MovingLocation estate agency offering serious sellers a complete home-mover service for less than £200 with only £100 commission. May be you can sell faster:j with an estate agent rather than having all the potential problems of trying to sell your house without an estate agent?

googler

kim775 wrote: »

Well,If you want to sell your house without paying a lot of money to the broker,I have a solution for you.

The only thing worse than home-grown SPAM is American SPAM

It's a UK-based forum, Kim. We don't have 'brokers' over here....