Any recent Scot House Move reviews?

scottishgirl87

We're hoping to get our flat up for sale in the next month or 2 and are currently stuck in the minefield that is choosing an estate agent. I have started to get quotes from local agents who have sold in our estate recently, however, I'm finding Scot House Move by far the cheapest.

A little put off by the fact they don't have any active properties for sale within my area at the moment (those listed on their website are sold, under offer, etc.), not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. On the other hand Purple Bricks are coming in more expensive but have a number of properties in the area and a colleague recently used them also.

Has anyone any recent experience with Scot House Move??

mysterymurdoch

How much is your house worth?

It's tempting to see how cheap an online agent is, but a high st agent is likely to get you a higher price and if I sold again I'd use one

ellie27

We used them when we sold our house in 2014.

We knew what our house was worth, had it valued by a few agents and same houses were selling along the road so knew what was realistic.

We had 4 viewers in the first few days and had 2 offers.
We went on to accept an offer and everything went smoothly. They took calls, arranged viewings, gave us quick feedback from viewers - normally the day after the viewing. They negotiated with buyers on price etc.

Would highly recommend them. We paid the £500ish upfront deal.

We wouldnt have got more using a high-street agent. We got our home report value which was the most we would ever have got. We would have been over £1500 more in fees with them.

If you are confident of the price you think you can market it at, and being realistic then go for it.

Pixie5740

Does it make that much difference who you use? As long as your property can be listed on portals such as Rightmove and whichever Solicitors Property Centre covers your area because that's where potential buyers will be looking. Your solicitor will receive offers and I assume you'll conduct the viewings yourself.

mysterymurdoch

ellie27 wrote: »

We had 4 viewers in the first few days and had 2 offers.

We wouldnt have got more using a high-street agent.

Sounds to me like you would. I got 4k over our home report value. Houses all over Scotland are selling for over home report value, assuming they're in desirable areas.

scottishgirl87

Thanks all. I managed to get a copy of the Home Report of an identical flat in our estate which was valued at £168k so we're expecting a similar value.

Am I really likely to get a higher price via a traditional estate agent? Think I'll need to put a spreadsheet together of all quotes but one has quoted £1000 +VAT and the lowest percentage wise has been 0.7% of sale. Compared with Scot House Move at £645 including signage outside.

ellie27

Very unlikely in my case. High street agents were wanting to advertise my house for much less than I actually put it on at. They are just desperate to sell and get their fee.

3 identical houses all sold within the 3 months or so before I put mine up, so it would have been unlikely I would have sold for much more than any of those houses. This was end 2014 and then in my area houses were selling under home report. Very different now though!

ellie27

Those fees quotes are they the full amount or do you not have an initial advertising fee ontop of that? around £300?

scottishgirl87

The quotes from high street agents do have an additional advertising fee around £300-£400. I put a spreadsheet together last night and to go with a traditional high street agent we'll actually only be around £900 worse off which doesn't seem that bad in the grand scheme of things. We're still debating what to do and of course that money is better in our pocket than there's but if a traditional agent is going to work for their money, so to speak, when Scot House Move won't as they'll be paid upfront then it might be worth our while.

gld73

As a potential buyer, I wanted to view a flat back in January that Scot House Move was advertising - they said it was already under offer and so no more viewings would be done.

It's now June, and the flat is still advertised .... every month I've contacted them thinking the sale has fallen through and it's back on the market, but no, I'm always told it's "Under offer" or "sold". Given the flat was empty/chain-free and was likely to appeal to an investor, I'm pretty sure the transaction wouldn't take this long.

I suspect that SHM just want some profile in this area and so they're keeping the few properties they've had here as "live" on the property websites even though they're no longer available.

So not an opinion on SHM as a seller, but as a buyer, very frustrating!!

scottishgirl87

Thanks, gld. That's good to know. I think I've ruled them out now anyway as I noticed they don't provide a floorplan so I think I've decided to go with Purple Bricks instead