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House Selling - Money Saving Tips

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Comments

  • terrierlady
    terrierlady Posts: 1,742 Forumite
    the sellers now know what their property is worth on the open market, and will use your offer as a bench mark.They will tell other viewers that they already have an offer of £.... making it likely that you may see it going to someone who can top your offer or can proceed,
    If your house is as nice as you say it is, yours will sell and you will be able to proceed quickly.
    Two trains of thought here, if you had been (SSTC)with a complete chain /proceedable; perhaps they would have accepted lower offer?  good luck.
    my bark is worse than my bite!!!!!!!!
  • If I had been 'proceedable' I'd have definitely put in a lower offer. The house I've made an offer on has only been on the market 5 days longer than mine and is the end of a chain. (Elderly person moving back with relatives).

    I'm not holding out much hope of getting it due to not having a buyer for mine, but it would be nice if by some miracle it all fell into place as easy as that.

    I do however, have an option - which I'm kind of sleeping on for the time being.

    A family member wants to rent my house - but I can't afford to pay 2 mortgages if he moves out later on or defaults.

    (I don't think he will deliberately default - but the rent for him will be quite high). He and his wife are in a top floor flat and desperate to move to a house. (Baby now becoming toddler and all that... He can't get on the housing ladder at present as it's too pricey.

    I've had words with my mortgage company who have said yes - but - they wanna charge me over £1k to get out of my current deal (which is portable and only has 2 months to run).

    Then they want me to change to a buy to let mortgage. All my equity and deposit fo the next house is tied up in this one so I don't think I can risk ending up with 2 mortgages.
  • Sorry - just thought - I'll post my above dilemma about letting my house as a seperate thread so as not to detract too much from this one.
  • terrierlady
    terrierlady Posts: 1,742 Forumite
    ;) maybe worth having a word with payless?
    my bark is worse than my bite!!!!!!!!
  • System
    System Posts: 178,077
    Photogenic Name Dropper First Post
    Community Admin
    Caroline
    A belated thanks for all the tips. Will start working on some of them asap. Didn't know there were some free listings as well.
    Cheers
    Wendy
  • spangle
    spangle Posts: 5 Forumite
    Have found this really excellent Marcus. thank you
    Spangle
    :wave: :wave: :wave:
  • ocemeer
    ocemeer Posts: 414 Forumite
    ???
    Would appreciate any help if possible. Currently trying to sell my house, but unsure if the estate agent is doing the best for me or for him.
    Would like a quick sale and am not in a chain (just getting one attaching me to a different kitchen sink). Checking on what the estate agent is doing is hard as am away with work and having read this site believe I could be getting a much better approach and hopefully a better sale.
    What can I expect from my estate agent?
  • System
    System Posts: 178,077
    Photogenic Name Dropper First Post
    Community Admin
    If you are in a booming property area ( The north west ) dont bother with an agent.

    Do it yourself

    Vast majority of buyers get the property guides from local papers.

    take a photo and write a very brief desciption, take itr to paper and they will do the rest. very often a 2 or 3 week placement will cost very little more than a single week. Cost less than £100.

    Alsao register with a online company that uses rightmove cost £150.

    so your cost inc mailing of details you do using word is less than £300

    estate agent fee are always plus vat. My house would cost £3000 to sell via an agent.

    Guess what I would choose.....
  • BigAde
    BigAde Posts: 439 Forumite
    Estate agents tend to advetise and incur the same costs regardless of how many properties they have on the market - within reason:)  An agent would be stupid not to spend on maketing on a 1 week lockin property because the vendor, on spotting this, can go elsewhere.  Thus they lose business - not likely.

    Caroline.  I would be careful with attempting to self sell and/or use internet marketing.  The reason being is that a good professional estate agent will have years of experience of your local area - how to sell that area, schools, tax.  They'll most likely already have hundreds of people looking in your area alone (I used to have several thousand and all of them having registered in the last 8 to 12 weeks!).  They know the local solicitors.  They'll know agents that will most likely have properties in your chain.  They'll know the council!

    And most important - a good agent will know how to properly track a sale, will be able to interpret reports with experience etc etc etc.

    A good agent's worth its gold.  But you should be able to get a bargain (first post) in the deal.  And yes there are agents that are real stinkers (too many really) but you can weed these out.

    I would personally only use internet services as an add on to using and agent.  Especially if you have a weird and wonderful property.

    Kindest Regards
    Marcus

    Yes, but with house prices as they are these days, an agent earns thousands upon thousands of pounds for each sale - and for what?  They simply introduce buyers and sellers.  This is an area where you can save big money.

    I say this from experience - last year I sold my house privately.  I advertised it on the web with Little House Company (as Caroline mentions).  They are definitely the company to use since they are the only one (or were at the time) that advertise on Rightmove, the biggest property web site.  Cost was approx £100.  I registered a domain and setup a simple web site with a catchy name - cost £40.  And setup an 0845 number for people to phone (cost £30).  I then took out full colour adverts in the main local property paper (cost £300).  I produced a printed 'brochure' with colour photos which I handed out/posted to anyone interested (cost £5).  Total cost was approx £500 compared with a potential  bill of over £4000 from an agent.  I could have done it even cheaper, but wanted to create a professional look.  
    An important note about phone numbers on adverts, you have 3 choices:
    - your normal landline, but do you really feel happy about advertising your phone number for every weirdo to see...
    - a mobile number, safe, but can also appear amateurish and can make you seem unapproachable.
    - An 0845 (or even 0870 :P) number - appears approachable and professional.  There are loads of web sites selling these at little cost and you can simply cancel it when you are finished with it.

    After two weeks of this sort of advertising I also marketed it with a local agent concurrently.  This is well worth noting - a sole agency agreement is just that, you can't use another agent, but there's nothing to stop you selling it privately at the same time.  I would mention to the agent that your are planning on doing this though as a matter of courtesy.  Make a note of names, addresses and times of contact of everyone who calls you may help if the agent later gets funny.  I was totally up front and honest about what I was doing with the agent and they were fine about it.  In the end I sold privately and the agent didn't get a penny - but then they understood that was a possibility at the outset.

    In my case it helped hugely in that I had a sought after house in a sought after area and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone or every property.  I had a huge amount of interest from marketing it myself and would definitely do so again.  There is a fair amount of work involved in doing it, but in my case I saved over £3500...  well worth the effort involved (in my opinion).  
    With the amount I saved I went up the car auction and got the wife a new(ish) car!

    If anyone's interested in further details I'm happy to post them here.
    Ah! Good old trusty beer... I hope you never change.
  • System
    System Posts: 178,077
    Photogenic Name Dropper First Post
    Community Admin
    I also read somewhere a long time ago, that if you find a house you want to buy, the estate agent, by law, has to give you a copy of any previous surveys that have been done if requested. does anybody know if this is correct?
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