Estate Agent or Purple Bricks

yllop1101

I sold (still going through) with PB. I live in a city where the market is very bouyant. I did the viewings myself, and sometimes asked my local property expert (LPE) to do follow up calls after. I sold after 10 days, asking price offer. 
I like the fact you can manage the viewings yourself (times etc) and can contact the viewers (I would message with parking instructions and say I was looking forward to showing them round). 
The place I am hoping to buy was also sold through PB and I found it equally easy as a buyer. The one thing I would absolutely steer clear of is using their online conveyancing, which the sellers have done, and so far, 10 weeks down the line, my solicitor has had zilch from them. It's gone on so long I'm now considering pulling out altogether. The PB agent is obviously useless as he's in a conflicted position, where he won't tell the seller to look at other solicitors as they're getting paid for the referral, so all he is says is 'I'm so confused as to what's going on' (as if it's not a common occurance- reviews suggest it is!).

Essentially, if you've got an easy place to sell, or you consider yourself to be a good sales woman/man, and your target buyer is likely to be able to use PB app/platform, then go for it. Just be prepared to do some chasing yourself, and absolutely do not use their own conveyancers. 

lookstraightahead

I've just bought a house - had it been an online company I would have avoided it. I find the write ups by the vendors unprofessional "superb new kitchen" when it isn't etc. I expect vendors to be over ambitious with price and expectations as they've usually heard the hype from the agent beforehand.

Cuddlybearman

rik111 said:

Love the " Both have stated they would expect the property to sell very quickly."
Who would ever go with an agent that told you the truth, its on page one of the estate agents manual ,compliment the vendors lovely house and tell them it will sell extremely quickly 🤣. That is just below make sure you sign them up for sole selling rights for  minimum 6 months..... Make sure you cross out their sole agency / selling rights for however many weeks and change it to 30 days, They cant say a lot they've just been telling you it will fly out. This immediately puts you to the top of list of priority properties they pit most effort into marketing.
None of the above applies to Purple Bricks, all your paying for with them is a Rightmove etc listing....

I'm afraid that's not true for all PB agents. As i said my agent has been as proactive as any estate agent - but as before i guess its a matter of who you get.

Navigaor31

As a buyer, I've really enjoyed the purple bricks app to book viewings and to liaise with the seller directly. 

Purple bricks themselves have been next to useless and the sellers are using their conveyancers who just don't seem responsive at all.

We get a call from PB occasionally asking how things are going, but that's it.  In the initial period of putting in an offer they were very confused with everything they were talking through. 

Main positive is the app, giving you the ability to put an offer in at anytime if day. We out our offer in at 8pm and it was accepted by the seller at 9pm.  Allowing proceedings to start much quicker. 

Bonniepurple

As a soon to be vendor and then buyer, I am going with local estate agents.  We had the guy round yesterday for a valuation. We bought the house through this agency, so he could see the before and after.  He’s a local lad (went to the same school DH did and my kids do) and knows the local market, which I think is important in our small village where everyone knows everyone (and, in many cases, are related to each other too!).   The agency was also immensely helpful when we bought, even though we weren’t their clients and that has stuck.

IME the easy bit is getting the offer.  The hard bit is the negotiating between parties and relaying messages.  I wouldn’t trust an online estate agent to do that.  

Mutton_Geoff

For me, a PB listing tells me a lot about the vendor. I'd never view a property listed through them or the other purely online agents I'd assume the particulars were wholly inaccurate, the asking price too high and the rest of the purchase process to be limited by the vendors wish to do everything as cheap as possible. I'm in the process of selling/buying. I'm skipping past any PB listings.

tigerlily74

Mutton_Geoff said:

For me, a PB listing tells me a lot about the vendor. I'd never view a property listed through them or the other purely online agents I'd assume the particulars were wholly inaccurate, the asking price too high and the rest of the purchase process to be limited by the vendors wish to do everything as cheap as possible. I'm in the process of selling/buying. I'm skipping past any PB listings.

This pretty much sums up my experience. The only thing keeping me going is how perfect the house is for us and how there is nothing comparable in the area we want to live in. Otehrwise I would have given up by now (10 weeks after offer and still getting useless incomplete responses from the Purplebricks conveyancer about very basic things).

WiseOwl00

We're currently buying a house with PurpleBricks. We found organising viewings via the online portal a lot easier than having to phone estate agents. Having the vendors show us around was a lot better as well. We've been shown round houses by estate agents and it was completely pointless. I asked an estate agent if the property they were showing us was leasehold or freehold - they said they didn't know and that I'd have to phone the office. I asked another one if the property has a chain, and again, they didn't know. It's nice being shown round by the vendors because they can answer all your questions, and then any extras that the estate agent wouldn't know. 

Since having our offer accepted, we haven't had contact with PurpleBricks. We initially had a woman who helped with the negotiation part and then made sure we had all put in our solicitor details and contact details on the portal, and that we had a mortgage in principle, etc. She was really easy to get hold of (via text), and sorted everything out quickly. We then had a courtesy phone-call from a post-sales team a few days later saying to give them a call if we had any issues. Since then we've just been talking to the vendor, whose details we got via the app. This has been so much better for us. We had a purchase fall through before this one with a high-street estate agent. We didn't have any contact with the vendor and had to go through the estate agent for updates. The vendor wouldn't instruct their solicitors, and every-time we asked when they'd do it, they'd take ages to reply to the estate agent. The estate agent never knew what was going on, and after 3 months the seller pulled out of the sale when he admitted he didn't even have a house to buy.

So our experience with physical estate agents has not been great at all! I'd much rather speak to the vendor myself and cut out the middle man. We've been updating each other through the process every few weeks, and it's really helped ease the anxiety caused by the last sale. Our vendor is using PurpleBricks solicitors and we've now gotten to the enquires stage, so I will have to see how this goes. But up until now, I've preferred this process. 

Thrugelmir

Navigaor31 said:

Main positive is the app, giving you the ability to put an offer in at anytime if day. We out our offer in at 8pm and it was accepted by the seller at 9pm.  Allowing proceedings to start much quicker. 

Nothing actually started at 9pm in the evening.  

juliedee4663

We put an offer in on a house marketed by Purple Bricks. The sale fell through when we lost our purchasers, through no fault of ours, but we have said that we would be very reluctant to purchase a house marketed by Purple Bricks again. What we particularly didn't like is that once the house is sold, Purple Bricks seem to encourage vendor and seller to communicate directly between themselves which we really weren't comfortable with. I also found that to withdraw our offer we had to send an email, and when using the link on their portal it was incorrect. I then found an email from when we had the offer accepted and used that. No acknowledgement from Purple Bricks that they had received our email, and we know the house was still listed on Right Move as sold a week after we pulled out.