Considered selling your House yourself?

Trident_2

Hi All Interested,

I see a lot of good information about how to get the best out of your Estate agent but have any of you considered selling your house yourself?

We did last year & found it quite easy - plus we saved nearly £2000 in Estate Agents fees!

Firstly I invited a few estate agents around to get an idea of the market & what our house was worth.

Next I sketched out a simple sign & went to a local sign maker who created two of 'For sale' boards - cost me £60. I put these up on the property where they were clearly seen from the road & path.

I'm no real computer guru but managed to create a website with the basic details of the house & a couple of digital photos. (I used the property details that we received when we purchased the place).

I also created a double sided handout using Microsoft Word along with some attractive photos of the house. I printed them out on good quality paper to use as handouts to prospective buyers.

Once the 'For sale' boards went up we had a trickle of interest - mostly from locals who had noticed the board. After about two weeks of luke warm response we realised that our house wasn't getting enough exposure.

Our local paper ran a property section with a 'House of the Week' slot. I phoned the paper and asked if it was available to the general public. They said that it usually went to Estate Agents but were prepared to sell the section for £170.

So we took a gamble & booked their 'House of the week' slot. We just sent them wording & a couple of pictures & the paper did a really good article on the property.

Next week it was in the local paper & I have to say this really worked. We got a dozen enquiries which led to two serious potential buyers.

My wife & I did the negotiation on price ourselves & we hooked a serious buyer. It took about 12 weeks from the boards going up to actually moving.

So our experiance was that the website didn't yeald any interest, the 'For Sale' boards certainly created interest & showed we were serious, The property details were essential to give to prospective buyers &, in our case, the local advert worked great - it was the thing that actually got people around to view the place.

Plus I also feel that we were sucessful because we had a relatively sale-able house in a bouant area with no potential problems.

So in conclusion we found selling ourselves worked fine, it cost us less than £250 & we saved a bundle (about £2000) in Estate Agents fees. I think we were quite lucky pluse we found it quite good fun too! However you need to be prepared to do quite a lot of the leg work & face to face negotiation yourselves.

If you are intending to sell and not in a hurry to move why not initally try selling your house yourself. If that doesn't work you can always go to the estate agents?

Hope this inspires some of you to give it a try?

Trident.

Debsie

What a good story!
I prefer the idea of having a third party between me & any prospective purchaser so it wouldn't be for me but it is good to hear of a successful transaction.

mightymo_2

I wish I had done that 5 years ago! I put my house on the market with an estate agent and within 3 days had sold it to a chap from up the road. It cost me £2000!

bosey

thanks for that Trident, i'm just about to sell so i'm going to give it a try!

kinster_2

I tried after buying a 'for sale' sign off Ebay... had a few viewings, but didn't sell. Got an agent in and they didn't sell, so p/x it.

Cacran

How do you get a free valuation from the estate agent. Will they just do one in the hopes of getting your business?

absolute0

Debsie wrote:

What a good story!
I prefer the idea of having a third party between me & any prospective purchaser so it wouldn't be for me but it is good to hear of a successful transaction.

Debsie,

You may be interested in this site: https://www.housenetwork.co.uk, they do all the negotiation work for you, providing you opt for the Agency package @ £199. You also get listed on rightmove.co.uk. Haven't had any experience with this company as I am also considering doing it myself.

Cheers

D

m00nie

Cacran wrote:

How do you get a free valuation from the estate agent. Will they just do one in the hopes of getting your business?

yes, just ring them up and they will come and value it for you, then just say you will think aboout it

tshrbhag

here's a few more websites that are having good traffic:

http://www.homesforsale.co.uk
http://www.homesonsale.co.uk
http://www.houseweb.com
http://www.gumtree.com (nice cool website)

Thnx
Terry

Elliott_Woods

You must stress to any EA's that you are thinking of selling - if they get the idea the valuation is for any other reason they will charge you a considerble fee.

chardonnay_2

we did this with our old house. thought it was worth a go and if no luck would then go to estate agents.

came home from work (friday)to see a for sale sign at end of road, fiance had made his own. we had sold the house by the sunday. couldn't believe it