Is an open house worthwhile?

Burchell27

My wife and I put our 2 bed on the market at the end of November 18. We realise it was a bad time of year with Christmas etc, and we’ve only had 1 viewing so far. It’s on with purple bricks which in hindsight may have been a mistake as they are only an online agent.

We have found a house we both love and want to offer on but can’t do anything until we have an offer on ours. A traditional estate agent wants to also market our house, but with a 3k fee. We are happy to do this but don’t know which route to take.

It’s currently on for 176,500. To cover the estate agent and purple bricks fees we need an extra 3k on top of the minimum we could take. We could take 170,00, but would need 173,00 to cover fees. The estate agent has suggested an open house at OIEO 160,00 to generate interest and hope people battle with each other to make up the money.

Is this worthwhile? Or should we just list it with the traditional estate agent and hope they drum in interest through normal channels?

Loopyloopz

Personally I don’t think open houses are that useful. We used an estate agent that did them as a way to launch houses on the market. We went with it as we had negotiated a good deal with them. We paid a lower percentage than you are. Is the £3000 including vat? ( I found they often don’t mention that their commission quote is plus vat). It seems a lot on the value of your house. That was pretty much what we paid on a house value of £320,000. Can you negotiate a better rate with the Esatet agent, or use another agent that charges less?

My dad had 2 open houses and neither came to anything either.

ognum

Burchell27 wrote: »

My wife and I put our 2 bed on the market at the end of November 18. We realise it was a bad time of year with Christmas etc, and we’ve only had 1 viewing so far. It’s on with purple bricks which in hindsight may have been a mistake as they are only an online agent.

We have found a house we both love and want to offer on but can’t do anything until we have an offer on ours. A traditional estate agent wants to also market our house, but with a 3k fee. We are happy to do this but don’t know which route to take.

It’s currently on for 176,500. To cover the estate agent and purple bricks fees we need an extra 3k on top of the minimum we could take. We could take 170,00, but would need 173,00 to cover fees. The estate agent has suggested an open house at OIEO 160,00 to generate interest and hope people battle with each other to make up the money.

Is this worthwhile? Or should we just list it with the traditional estate agent and hope they drum in interest through normal channels?

Two parts to your question. I sold a property with an open house, 15 viewers, 8 offers sold for £14K over asking. However, the market was good, supply was low the flat was empty and newly decorated.

If your budget is so tight that you need 3K to cover fees from your sale you are probably cutting everything a bit fine. There is no way you can guarantee the offers you will get and if the offer is not enough you will have saturated your whole market and are likely to get no more viewings for a while.

I think an open house only works as a launch for a property that has not been on the market before.

Good luck

Cakeguts

What are you going to do if the market says that £173k is overpriced for your house and no one wants to pay that for it?

Crashy_Time

Burchell27 wrote: »

My wife and I put our 2 bed on the market at the end of November 18. We realise it was a bad time of year with Christmas etc, and we’ve only had 1 viewing so far. It’s on with purple bricks which in hindsight may have been a mistake as they are only an online agent.

We have found a house we both love and want to offer on but can’t do anything until we have an offer on ours. A traditional estate agent wants to also market our house, but with a 3k fee. We are happy to do this but don’t know which route to take.

It’s currently on for 176,500. To cover the estate agent and purple bricks fees we need an extra 3k on top of the minimum we could take. We could take 170,00, but would need 173,00 to cover fees. The estate agent has suggested an open house at OIEO 160,00 to generate interest and hope people battle with each other to make up the money.

Is this worthwhile? Or should we just list it with the traditional estate agent and hope they drum in interest through normal channels?

Very unlikely to happen TBH, the agent just want their fee.

martin1959

Purple pricks are a waste of space. A lot of buyers will not even look at a property marketed by them.

They tend to over value to get the business in my experience, and they have very little / no after sale service to chase through to completion.

Use a High St EA and pay the fee. We have just negotiated 1% including VAT. Yes, it’s more than online EA, but we will not get messed around with people who are not in a position to proceed.

Tridentmorph

Purple bricks is a prime example of get what you pay for. I would suggest having a frank look at price you hope to achieve as often overvalue for the instruction. Your new local agent may well being circumspect saying go on at 160k and hope to get more to inject some realism into the transaction but still get the instruction to sell and get the price down to realistic levels in the future.

As the above posters have said, if you are needing every penny to buy try and have a realistic discussion with a couple of local agents to see if this will actually stack up.

Open houses can work when there is a high demand in an area and first launching, particularly with first time buyer property, you may get lucky as a good agent should have potential buyers on the books to get straight in.

Crashy_Time

Cakeguts wrote: »

What are you going to do if the market says that £173k is overpriced for your house and no one wants to pay that for it?

Good question.

eddddy

Burchell27 wrote: »

The estate agent has suggested an open house at OIEO 160,00 to generate interest and hope people battle with each other to make up the money.

I would be very dubious about that.

Ask the EA to show you detailed examples of other similar properties in your area where that has worked for them.

It just sounds like step 1 of a plan by the EA to talk you into accepting an offer of about £160k.

-taff

How did you decide on the price of 173,000?

lookstraightahead

Remember if people start making silly bids they might not get the valuation they need from the mortgage company. This is happening a lot at the moment.