Want to sell house...advice please

TerracedHouse

Do you pay the estate agent any upfront costs or is all on completion of the sale.


ie if I choose for any reason not to sell will I have to pay a fee for the time they have put in advertising the house. Will I be charged a fee if I decide to change estate agents?

Guest101

TerracedHouse wrote: »

Do you pay the estate agent any upfront costs or is all on completion of the sale.


ie if I choose for any reason not to sell will I have to pay a fee for the time they have put in advertising the house. Will I be charged a fee if I decide to change estate agents?

depends on the contract

hazyjo

As above - although usually 'no'. Read carefully though and google/ask on here anything you're not sure about!


Jx

sam3103

I am currently in the same position so will tell you all I have learnt.
We sold our house (we were first time buyers when we bought it and it was a new build) for £123000. We used a ewe move agent who was offering a new offer (they were new agents) of 0.6% which has now raised to 1.2% - would have happily paid them the higher amount if needed, they were very proactive!
We didn't need a new epc as the last one had been done less than 10 years ago and we had made no alterations.

First we called a few agents to get valuations. The key here is to get an agent in your area with a good rep. Look at their listings on rightmove. Which ones in your area have listings with good photos, descriptions and eye catching listings? You want people to be interested enough in the information they provide to organise a viewing.
Ask the agents how much they charge, usually a % of what they sell your house for but some do have one off payment methods, some of these can be upfront which could become a problem if they are not proactive and don't sell your home.
We learnt a valuable lesson in the choosing of our agent, initially went with a different one with a good rep for selling homes quickly and at asking price or higher, turned out they were not proactive at all and did not sell our home. (We ended up changing - looking in more detail the houses they were selling were of a certain criteria - country homes, large askin prices - ours was a 2 bed flat in town centre).

Most people look at rightmove these days and rarely bother with window adverts or newspaper listings.

Most estate agents let you leave them with 14 days notice before they take the listing off, they can try and persuade you to stay but just be firm if you do find yourself wanting to change.

Once you have accepted an offer you recieve a memo of sale from the estate agent and you instruct your solicitor.
If you are going on to buy something else, once you have an offer accepted, notify your solicitor and they will start the legals and will most likely ask for around £300 for searches.

The estate agent for your sale will get paid through the solicitors from the proceeds of your sale.

eddddy

TerracedHouse wrote: »

Do you pay the estate agent any upfront costs or is all on completion of the sale.

ie if I choose for any reason not to sell will I have to pay a fee for the time they have put in advertising the house. Will I be charged a fee if I decide to change estate agents?

EAs' contracts can vary a lot. In my experience...

- In high price, high turnover areas like the south east, you can generally get very relaxed 'no sale, no fee' contracts. (Possibly because the EAs are making easier money.)

- In low price, low turnover areas, the EAs seem to have much harsher contracts. They tend to have more 'ready, willing and able' clauses, withdrawal fees, and worse.


But always read the contract before signing to make sure you understand all fees payable in all circumstances. And attempt to negotiate out fees and other terms that you don't like.


And of course, there are some EAs who just charge a fixed fee up front - whether the property eventually sells or not.

phoebe1989seb

TerracedHouse wrote: »

Forgot to ask


re online estate agents good, or is it preferable to use high street estate agents as people can browse the advertising boards as well as online?

Personally we've always preferred to use a good local EA, but we've been selling the quirky, characterful, often rural - and sometimes higher end - houses

We've found that expert local knowledge is a godsend in these situations and have - almost always - sold far quicker than predicted.

Otoh, if you're selling either a fairly standard property (such as your terrace), one that's likely to be in great demand and/or you are in a fast moving location, I can't see why a good online EA wouldn't work just as well.

I've never liked the idea of Purple Bricks, but friends of ours instructed them late last week to sell their Victorian terrace in the South West and after a flurry of viewings over the weekend, it has today gone SSTC. Not sure how close to asking price they got, but my gut feeling is they achieved AP. Imo, it wouldn't have mattered what type of EA they used, as demand for that kind of property in their location is so great.....