Selling Without an Estate Agent

[googler]

Originally Posted by freddyb45

Personally I've never sold privately, I've always gone through an estate agent. However, some of my friends have sold privately and gotten a little more than what the estate agent quoted them, and obviously they didn't have to pay the commission % on top of this.

They might have got more than the EA may have QUOTED them, but dontcha think it would be interesting, and a more realistic comparison, to see what the EA would have actually GOT them had they been given a shot at it?

[Mark@1]

Originally Posted by Bon Bon

Amongst the confusion over the house market madness it seems more and more people are choosing to sell their house online without an estate agent. Now hopefully people won't think I am being thick asking this but I don't quite understand how this is possible.

From my understanding, when selling a house you need a hips pack, is there any nationwide HIP's providers who allow you to order a HIP's pack online?

With that in mind, all one would need in order to sell their house therefore is a HIP's pack and a solicitor to sign over the land ownership once a suitable buyer is found through some form of marketing. If somebody could run me through this from the very first step to the very last step, or provide me with a link to a resource online that explains the very question then I would be most grateful.

Hi Bon bon,

Now, it is possible to sell your house without estate agents. You can take the help of house buying companies for direct house sell. In fact, now a days these companies are offering some value added services also like free house valuation, legal cost management etc.

[googler]

From the quick-house-buyers website FAQs -

Q. Do I have to pay any commission or agency fees?
A. No. Because you will not be using an agent to sell your property, you will not need to pay any fees. This could result in a saving of £1,000's. If you're already using an Estate Agent, you may need to seek legal advice with regards to your contract. So call now on

Q. Will you offer market value for my property?
A. No. Because we offer a guaranteed and more importantly a fast sale, we reflect this in the price that we will offer for your property. An offer will normally be around 65-85% of the confirmed market value but may be lower if a very fast (i.e. 7 day) sale is required.

-------------------------

OK, saving the homeowner '£1,000's' but only offering 65% of the market value, POSSIBLY LESS, you say.....

OK, let's take a house of £200,000 market value as an example. If someone sold it for full market value and paid what I would consider a 'high-end' agency fee of around 2% (£4,000), they're left with £196,000. If they get 90% of market value, and pay the same 2% fee on that, they're left with £176,400.

You 'save them £1,000s' in fees, but the range that you'll offer is £130 - 170,000, POSSIBLY LESS than £130,000, on a £200,000 house!

What benefit is there in saving a £4,000 EA fee if the owner effectively loses £30,000 - £70,000 of the value of their home?

[brian]

Mark@1 now banned for spamming.

There are some reputable house buying companies - I always recommend MPG Investments:
Sell your home quick, or sell and rent back to get cash for houses and keep your home!

because there are definitely times when it's more of a benefit to sell for cash quickly, then allow for a sale process to drag on for an extended period of time.

[googler]

..and for bare-faced highway robbery?

Stand and Deliver, indeed....

[EARocks]

Hi Chris, just to let you know as you seem to be deluded as to what an estate actually does for their money compared to the waste of time online sites that you seem so keen on.

I would much rather pay a higher fee for a professional agent registered with the Ombudsman, with an office full of trained friendly staff working hard all week calling out on my property, with a base of clients and a network of offices and huge advertising exposure, any day over a cheap online service attracting no interest in my property. internet advertising is great which is why agents all use the major players in this market and not a 2bob small company.

you also don't seem to have much of an understanding of the UK's major property sites as they do show detailed click through rates of each individual property, these sites also give the agent charts and stats showing levels of interest of the property compared to others and looks at how they would perform if reduced in price.

so in reply to your question of " can you get this sort of service from an estate agent?? yes I do think so!!!!!!!

many thanks

[chris Jones]

So Mr EA rocks - I'm the deluded one am I? What a shocker... An estate agent that doesn't like the fact that I'm competition.

"I would much rather pay a higher fee for a professional agent registered with the Ombudsman, with an office full of trained friendly staff working hard all week calling out on my property, with a base of clients and a network of offices and huge advertising exposure"

An office full of trained staff - so sites such as mine don't employ trained personnel to look after our clients? I think you'll find that IPR sites take their clients interests very seriously. We are tirelessly working with "professionally trained" personnel to improve our services for the seller and the buyer. But here's the best bit - we don't, and won't charge for any new services or improvements we make.

"Working hard all week calling out on my property" - Who are you trying to kid? I've worked in the game for long enough to know that this simply is not the case. You chase up new leads of interest and push for quicker completions with sold properties - that's only because it’s going to benefit you!

"network of offices" - unless your working for a large chain then most EA's are single 'one shop wonders' who solely serve a small part of one town/city and will have limited resources the same as any other property related seller.

"Huge advertising exposure" - so this huge exposure you talk about. Is this the internet - I think it might well be! So what other huge exposure can you subject a client’s property to? Oh of course I forgot about the picture and brochure in your shop window - do apologise, we can't possibly compete with that.

"you also don't seem to have much of an understanding of the UK's major property sites as they do show detailed click through rates of each individual property"

I'm absolutely aware of the fact that agents can track each individual click through rate. My point was that this information is not readily available to the client 24/7 whenever they want it. It is purely at the EA's discretion to divulge this information.

Can you explain one detail for me? National statistics are showing that on average an EA is averaging around 3 sales per month, in this present climate. Doesn't this show that an EA is completely reliant on the buying market to sell stock? Therefore, with a reduced buying market EA's are quickly going under and struggling to survive. If a property is advertised for sale at the right price it will sell irrelevant of the fact that it sits with an agent or an IPR site. Over inflated prices and huge stock surplus are largely down to the fact that agents over inflated client's properties in order to get them on their books - FACT.

The basics are quite simple - if you want to sell your property, advertise it for the right price. A property will sell if priced accordingly to market conditions irrelevant of the fact it’s with an EA or an IPR site.

All we're doing is providing the public with an alternative option that works - FACT.

[Becky]

Gosh this is such a heated discussion.

I am an estate agent in Swansea, and am feeling a pinch. As I am self employed I have to work alot harder than other agents but thankfully I have a world wide brand behind me.

I do however like it when home owners try selling thier property privately. This means they really want a sale on thier home...that it self gives me confidence that they want thier house sold as much as I do.

We offer different contracts to such sellers. For instance, SOLE AGENCY, this means we would be the only agency advertising, this does give the vendor the right to introduce a buyer and not be liable for fee's. If we inroduce the buyer obv we get paid and follow the sale through.

The market is tough at the moment, I would as an estate agent suggest you use an agency but there is nothing to stop you trying yourself too.

This is my first day on this forum.

Hope the above helps.

and good luck

[Oli]

Hi,

My question is:

Has anyone on this forum used a private sales website to market their property? If so what is your feedback on the individual site and what results did you get?

I have done some research into these sites and found a few of them including Sell4Less, PropertyLadder, BuyItPrivately and MyPropertyForSale.

At a glance Sell4Less seem to have the most professional looking website and quite attractive prices. However I have not heard of them before where as I have heard of HouseLadder. Has anyone used any of these? Could you give me feedback?

I am new to this forum and all I have seen so far is squabbling between EAs and owners of private property sales websites. I really don't want to hear the pros and cons of each way I can market, I just want feedback on the quality and cost of the private sales site from people who have used them so I can hear customer feedback or other genuine potential customers who have been doing their research.

Oli

[googler]

Originally Posted by chris Jones

An office full of trained staff - so sites such as mine don't employ trained personnel to look after our clients? I think you'll find that IPR sites take their clients interests very seriously. We are tirelessly working with "professionally trained" personnel to improve our services for the seller and the buyer. But here's the best bit - we don't, and won't charge for any new services or improvements we make.

"network of offices" - unless your working for a large chain then most EA's are single 'one shop wonders' who solely serve a small part of one town/city and will have limited resources the same as any other property related seller.

"Huge advertising exposure" - so this huge exposure you talk about. Is this the internet - I think it might well be! So what other huge exposure can you subject a client’s property to? Oh of course I forgot about the picture and brochure in your shop window - do apologise, we can't possibly compete with that.

National statistics are showing that on average an EA is averaging around 3 sales per month, in this present climate.

If a property is advertised for sale at the right price it will sell irrelevant of the fact that it sits with an agent or an IPR site. Over inflated prices and huge stock surplus are largely down to the fact that agents over inflated client's properties in order to get them on their books - FACT.

The basics are quite simple - if you want to sell your property, advertise it for the right price. A property will sell if priced accordingly to market conditions irrelevant of the fact it’s with an EA or an IPR site.


All we're doing is providing the public with an alternative option that works - FACT.

You make it sound as though you won't charge for changes to your site, whereas EARocks will - but I don't think there's any suggestion that he would - so this is a red herring. How many personnel do you employ?

You still haven't told us what your 'IPR' site is - both what IPR stands for, and what your URL is, so we can assess it for ourselves. You said earlier your site feeds property data to Fish4homes, Nestoria, etc, but gave nothing away to identify 'your' site. I'd like to see it for myself.

Even if EARocks isn't a member of a network, and has limited offices, surely that's a better situation than yours? You offer internet promotion, and internet promotion only - whereas EARocks and other EAs at least offer other avenues by which the property will be promoted. The way I see it, you're the one with the limited resources, since you're using the internet and nothing else. What other resources do you have?

Pictures and brochures in shop windows - there's five EA offices in my town. I've been in or around some of them, and to my mind, this is the situation - (a) the locals invariably stop and look for anything new as they walk the high street, as do I, and (b) if someone travels in from outside the local area, and are looking for a property, they WILL check the local agents and their windows, buy a local paper to look for those agents' advertising, etc. You don't appear to offer anything in this regard. If you do, please tell us about it.

Again, tell us - WHICH national statistics are you referring to?

It's not a FACT that over-inflated prices have led to EAs having more inventory than this time last year - it's the financial climate in the country generally - restricted lending to first-time buyers, tighter lending criteria generally, in other words - the 'credit crunch'. In my locale, there's over 650 properties for sale at the moment with a certain group of agents. This time last year they had 240. I'm open to you convincing me that's because they've overpriced 410 of them, but I really don't think that'll fly.....

"If a property is advertised for sale at the right price it will sell irrelevant of the fact that it sits with an agent or an IPR site"

So what advantage does your IPR site have ....???

"All we're doing is providing the public with an alternative option that works - FACT"

This 'fact' has yet to be proven. You haven't told us how many properties have been sold through your IPR site yet. You haven't told us how many clients you have, and how many listings you currently have on your IPR site. You haven't even told us the URL of your site.