Selling our flat online - advice??

Gem+Dave+Kaci

We're hoping to move soon and after reading all your advice on here, I've decided to sell our flat online rather than using an Estate Agent (and save at least £1000!!).

What is the best website to use to sell it, and does anyone have any advice on how I can make the flat more attractive for when I arrange viewings??

Thanks!!

Ian_W

As no-one else has replied yet I'll put my two pen'oth in. Never sold a UK property online but have recently sold an overseas one for free [if you thought UK EA's are rip-off merchants, try Spain -5%!!] and am looking at UK properties online at present.
Firstly you only save a Grand if you sell and if you're serious I wouldn't discount EA's altogether in this very slow market - if you go with a sole agency & online you only pay the EA if they find the buyer, in which case IMO they've earned their corn.
If you search back through the posts someone has posted a pretty full list of free/low cost property sites quite recently. The 2 I come across most often when searching RightMove are thelittlehousecompany.co.uk & houseweb.co.uk. If you're not with an EA I would certainly pay for a package that puts you on RightMove or one of the other portals - Meanmachine recently posted one he said was better than RM for London, you could PM him for the name if you're in the Smoke.
When selling overseas I also did a stand alone website as an online brochure - gives you more room for photos & description than co sites and potential buyers don't have to contact you to get details. You may have free web space from your ISP and a lot provide site builders so it's not particularly difficult.
Then put free ads on ever conceivably relevent website you can find [I'm still getting occasional enquires from ones I'd forgotton I was on!!] but all the serious enquires and the 2 asking price offers came from 1 site, which surprised me cos some others looked great but this one was very local to the area where I was selling.
Although the web is a wonderful tool many buyers still rely on newspapers, so I would back up with private ads in the local property press or anywhere else your target audience might see them - once sold a flat from an ad in the local newsagents window - so don't discount ads away from the web, local employers, stations, anywhere your potential buyers might see them, with a www address on them.
Can't think of too much else. Oh, prep of the flat. Declutter, depersonalise, paint everything that doesn't move magnolia and everything that does [meaningful OH, kids, pets] in deep freeze or storeage .
Best of luck.

kevinyork

Tried selling online and with estate agents. On the current property i listed it on about 5 free online sites as well as with the largest local agent in my area. Only had 1 email xpressing interest as a result of the websites and that was last week after exchange of contracts!

As someone who buys and sells regularly my advice would be:

If you really want to sell, in this flat market use a reputable agent. If they are good they would probably be able to negotiate the any offers up a bit more to at least cover the cost of their own fees. Much more difficult to do this negotiation yourself.

If you are just testing the market or can wait for a sale then there would be nothing lost in giving the online agents a try.

However, it does look like this flat/decreasing marking may be here for a while so every month you wait hanging around for a response from the online options could be another percent off your asking price.

Hope this helps

Kev

odorus

Not much to add except you would be held responsible under the property descriptions act. This means if the buyer feels that you have misrepresented your property, intentially or by accident, they can sue you. If an EA sells your place then they would get sued. At the moment EA's are desperate for your business so you could haggle on the commission.

Gem+Dave+Kaci

How much should I aim for with the commision? The flat should sell for about £105,000 so how much would be a good percentage of that to pay if I choose to use an EA?

Luckily everything except the bedroom is still magnolia (I'm lazy! ) and we're currently in the process of De-cluttering which is impossible with a baby!!

Houseweb.co.uk does look pretty good so I might use them for a month - see how much interest I get - and then move onto an estate agent if I don't get anywhere. If I instruct an EA though, I'm guessing I'd still get charged fees if I then sold it myself on the web??
Thanks for all your help!!

Ian_W

I'd get 4 EA's to value it [before you go on the web, if you're going to try that 1st] and go for somewhere around the middle valuation. They'll tell you their fees but you should be able to play one off against the other. They vary widely but here [NW] it's usually about 1%, some places around 2%, so if you can get them to £800/£1000 that's probably about right on your sale price.

If you use a SOLE agency you shouldn't pay a fee if the buyer comes through your own efforts - there is more info on the house sales websites - but in fairness tell the agent what you're doing, it should avoid any problems if you ring and tell them you've sold privately - but might make negotiating their fee more difficult as they will have costs which they won't cover if you sell it.
Best of luck.

Doozergirl

As long as you tell them you are advertising it yourself, they will take this into account - most won't charge you if you sell it yourself.