Anyone used Strike Online Estate Agents?

Danger_Mouse

Hi,
Just wondering if anyone has used the online estate agents, Strike?
I've seen a few of their for-sale boards popping up in my area. I see their model is estate agency for 'free' but they try and upsell all their partners e.g. conveyancing 
I've previously used Purple Bricks on my own house (now selling a deceased relative's house) and Strike seems pretty much the same apart from Purple Bricks charge a flat fee. We paid PB just under £1k and I don't think the work they did really warranted that

eddddy

As you probably know, Housesimple have renamed themselves as Strike. They seem to be offering the same service they previously charged £1k for when they were called Housesimple.

My guess is that the plan is to build up market share and market awareness (with a forest of for-sale boards everywhere), and maybe squeeze some competitors out of business - then whack-up their prices.

So maybe take advantage whilst they're free. (If you're happy with a 13 week sole agency contract and 6 month total contract period, etc.)


One suggestion I've heard is that they 'pressurise' buyers to use their conveyancing and mortgage partners, who are expensive and not very good. Hence the sale becomes slow and painful. But who knows if that's true!

niceguyed

They have a freemium model as their website alludes how they make their money https://strike.co.uk/selling/fees/ 
I'm sure there is a hard sell on their selected and 'carefully approved' commercial partners.  Not for me personally now, although back in the day when they were HouseSimple and new we fell for the speal and regretted spending the money upfront. As a baseline if you're happy to run viewings this could work although how easy they are to deal with for potential buyers would be a concern.

parkingadvice1212

They don't seem particularly bothered about selling houses - awful descriptions, awful photographs, and when I tried to book a viewing with them I never heard back.

Robbo66

They will make money by selling your information after all in todays world Data is the new gold

Danger_Mouse

parkingadvice1212 said:

They don't seem particularly bothered about selling houses - awful descriptions, awful photographs, and when I tried to book a viewing with them I never heard back.

Thanks for the feedback, so you were selling your house or looking to book a viewing on a property through them?

parkingadvice1212

Danger_Mouse said:

parkingadvice1212 said:

They don't seem particularly bothered about selling houses - awful descriptions, awful photographs, and when I tried to book a viewing with them I never heard back.

Thanks for the feedback, so you were selling your house or looking to book a viewing on a property through them?

Trying to buy 

v_rouge

I think it depends on your buyer/vendor. We are currently buying through them and the whole negotiation phase was so stressful, they did the automated 'we've got news about your offer' and we waited for them to contact us and never did so we ended up calling them. It took them over a week to remove it from the market and we'd read horror stories about gazumping and not treating buyers very well so I would never want to go through that experience again. We had to reach out to our vendors as we were just getting ignored so they had to contact Strike on our behalf. Luckily our vendors are lovely and we are able to communicate directly with them should any further issues arise. Just a heads up if you use them and you want to keep your buyers around the offer/acceptance stage. 

GDB2222

I’ve used Openrent to let a property, and it went very well. They passed on the enquiries promptly, and I did everything else. That included me doing the photos and description, as well as showing the prospective tenants round. If I were selling I’d be interested in a similar arrangement, where the online agency just provide access to the online portals and nothing else.

joe90mitch

parkingadvice1212 said:

They don't seem particularly bothered about selling houses - awful descriptions, awful photographs, and when I tried to book a viewing with them I never heard back.

Isn't the point that the vendors themselves do that? Certainly the house we viewed listed on Housesimple (as per above, the old name for Strike) around 6 months ago only had photos taken by the vendors. Same for the viewings, we had timeslots we could choose and then the vendors would choose them and directly correspond with us. It was only when the offers started being made that someone from Housesimple actually interacted with us.

eddddy

joe90mitch said:
Isn't the point that the vendors themselves do that? Certainly the house we viewed listed on Housesimple (as per above, the old name for Strike) around 6 months ago only had photos taken by the vendors. Same for the viewings, we had timeslots we could choose and then the vendors would choose them and directly correspond with us. It was only when the offers started being made that someone from Housesimple actually interacted with us.

I believe they offer 2 levels of service - depending on where the property is.

If the property is in their "main catchment area", they say they visit the property to do a valuation, take photos, create a floor plan.

If it's outside their area, they say they do a 'virtual valuation' and give guidance to the seller on how to take photos and how to create a floor plan.

(I should stress, this is what they say - I've no experience of dealing with them.)