Selling and buying a house privately

leci

Hi:santa2:,

I'm new to the forum but have been lurking for a couple of weeks as we have put our house on sale and are seriously looking for a new home. My question is, have any of you successfully sold and/or bought a house privately? What was the experience like? what was the process like? what tools if any were used to help you complete the process.

Also are their others who, like me would like to complete the selling and buying process without the use of an Estate Agent? What stopped/is stopping you?

This is also a bit of a research project of mine to understand what the options are for people wanting to sell or buy a house privately (without the use of EA). So far I have found Tipelo and Hatched, whose business model are not so far off conventional Agency models.

Thanks, I'm looking forward to hearing all your experiences.

G_M

This comes up fairly regularly.

Use theforum search function for previous discussions.

googler

I privately sold parents' house after they'd passed away. Small village, shortly after second parent had passed, a note through the door from a young couple renting nearby.

Brought them in to view, they expressed serious interest, I hired solicitor to handle legals from my side.

The likelihood of everyone having this degree of luck in having the right buyer at the right time for the right house at the right price is remote, to say the least, which is why true private sales are generally rare.

Once you advertise it to the general public, it's not a private sale, in my book.

Madmel

We sold privately in 2006. Having found our current house via an agent, I got 3 in to value the old house. None of them particularly impressed me and gave the impression that they were doing me a favour, and would charge me 1.5% of the sale price for the privilege.

The market was still buoyant then, and the people we were buying from wanted a decent gap between exchange and completion so we decided to put up a notice in the window and see if we could sell it ourselves. 3 viewings later and we sold for £5k under the highest asking price the 3 EAs had advised. Given that we saved £5k+ in EA fees, we were happy. The buyers lived close by so we kept things moving between us. Our solicitor was fine about it and kept us informed at all stages. This was a local firm, so everything was straightforward.

The market is obviously different now. Our current home is more niche and I would probably use a specialist EA if we were selling up. However, the experience did not put me off, and if the circumstances were right, I might do it again.

leci

G_M wrote: »

This comes up fairly regularly.

Use theforum search function for previous discussions.

Hi, thank you! I have been doing that also but wanted to understand a little more about the different steps people took. So far I've read a lot about private sales between family members, friends, friends of friends and neighbours but not much in regards to dealing with private sales with the general public. I guess what I'm trying to learn is how private sellers and buyers get the exposures, which is why I mentioned Hatched and Tipelo.


Sorry if this was a repetitive thread, just trying to gain a deeper and broader understanding.

googler

leci wrote: »

I guess what I'm trying to learn is how private sellers and buyers get the exposures, which is why I mentioned Hatched and Tipelo.

They don't.

Private sales are either made between people who know each other, or between buyer and seller who are introduced to each other via an agent's buyer and seller lists.

As soon as the property is 'exposed' to the general public, it's no longer a private sale.

Davesnave

leci wrote: »

. So far I've read a lot about private sales between family members, friends, friends of friends and neighbours....

I think that's mostly how it happens if it is a genuinely private sale.

It helps if there's a third party around who can offer reassurance that the potential buyer/seller isn't flakey.

I sold privately and bought from a friend. It was all in the pre-internet age in an area of high local demand. My buyer was a friend of the next door neighbour,

I couldn't contemplate selling my current property privately. Like Madmel, I'd do best with a specialist agent and national advertising.

hazyjo

Have heard good things about housenetwork and eMoov (will use one next year) - although, as explained above, they are online agents, nothing to do with private sales.

Jx

moneyistooshorttomention

The house I "shoulda bought" as a starter house was a private sale. The vendor let me down fairly early on in proceedings - and I found he'd done it to people before me and people after me. He'd not really intended to sell to anyone by the look of it - though someone managed to buy the house off him some years down the line.

I bought the "replacement house" starter one as a private sale. I was told about it by someone I knew. Agreed to buy it. It all went very much the same way I would imagine it would have gone if the house had been on the market with an EA. This time the vendor didnt let me down.

A couple of people I knew were keeping an eye on the seller during it - just in case.

I don't regard it as any big deal to buy privately - rather than the conventional way.

I would probably have sold my last house privately - if it had been in good condition (rather than average). The reason I went down the EA route was that I'd got it together enough for a starter house of that era and it was 1980s style (bought in the 1980s and intended to be sold on in the 1980s). I'd only done what I had to in the way of maintenance work (that was quite a bit as it was - eg having to replace the roof) - and wasn't going to "update" a house I had no intention of keeping. So it was looking a bit old-fashioned by the time I sold it a couple of years back.

If I sold current house - I'm guessing it would go privately (down to it now being a lot more modern than many houses here - so hopefully the "grapevine" would find me a buyer).

teddysmum

It's over 20 years ago and I believe there have been some changes since then, but I sold my late father's bungalow privately.


We (my sister and I ) had estate agents in to give estimates, then put a For Sale poster in the window.


It is on a popular estate and the second people to view (son of neighbour opposite, and his wife) agreed to buy.


I used a library book to draft my own documents, which I took to the buyers' solicitor. He asked for a few minor word changes to clarify , then accepted and things went ahead.


The only glitch was that it was winter and my sister hadn't drained the water properly, resulting in a minor flood. The buyers asked for £200 off the price, as they were going to demolish the affected wall, anyway.

AdrianC

It's all very well saving a couple of grand in EA fees - but if the EA sell it more quickly or for more money, then it's a false economy.