House moving process... the chain

[Count Steer]

I do think that part of the problem now is that the buyer often never meets the seller so there's this thing that you're dealing with hypothetical people through an, erm, profit motivated intermediary. ie an agent. A lot of the stitching up is due to the machinations of the agent. It all becomes a bit 'remote' and you never get to look the people you're messing up if the agent says 'We've got a better offer' (from more people you'll never get to look in the eye).

[asmethurst99]

We’re waiting to exchange contracts on our move - our buyers are mortgage free and we are moving sideways as you are Dern.
Estate agents won’t take you seriously unless you have yours on the market.luckily ours sold for the asking price within hours - at that point we hadn’t found anywhere but it did make it easier when putting an offer in (and having it accepted)
I’m looking forward to being in the house but the day of moving fills me with dread…
Their is no real chain as the house we are buying is being sold by someone moving abroad but it still has the potential to go tits up.
No real help for you but I sympathise (says he riding on the 25 bus with his bike gear picking up his second bike)

[dern]

We’ve booked the estate agents to give us a valuation on Friday. Two local and purple bricks. The purple bricks guy phoned up and asked me how much I thought it was worth. Brilliant.

[MyLittleStudPony]

FWIW I sold my last house but one with Purple Bricks. It worked really well and the savings were there vs a conventional estate agent.

I did use a regular estate agent for the house I sold more recently but I knew the guy in charge and I had already moved so I couldn't do the viewings easily; and the estate agent did a good job on those and got a good price, so for me that was worth it on that occasion.

[dern]

We're going with Purple Bricks after all. The other estate agents valuations differed by 100k on a house that's probably worth about 450k. I couldn't see any reason to give them 6k in fees and every estate agent I spoke to except for Purple Bricks slagged off all the other estate agents.

[Mr. Dazzle]

For a real laugh get the agent started on how they feel about Rightmove. Sky high fees! Never get back to you! Charge extra for a better listing!

Just make sure you take a fresh irony meter

[MyLittleStudPony]

We're going with Purple Bricks after all. The other estate agents valuations differed by 100k on a house that's probably worth about 450k. I couldn't see any reason to give them 6k in fees and every estate agent I spoke to except for Purple Bricks slagged off all the other estate agents.

When I listed my last place at the end of last year I think some estate agents said they'd get way more for it that was feasible, in the hope I'd go with them.

[Yorick]

We're going with Purple Bricks after all. The other estate agents valuations differed by 100k on a house that's probably worth about 450k. I couldn't see any reason to give them 6k in fees and every estate agent I spoke to except for Purple Bricks slagged off all the other estate agents.

When I listed my last place at the end of last year I think some estate agents said they'd get way more for it that was feasible, in the hope I'd go with them.

When we sold our last place in UK we were in no rush.
We contacted 3 estate agents and they all slagged each other off.
All about the same valuation.
We told them we wanted another £20k

We let them fight it out and we got what we wanted

[mangocrazy]

Another Vroomy post, another dodgy link...

[Count Steer]

Another Vroomy post, another dodgy link...

Deleted.

[asmethurst99]

we've been in 3 months i was getting PTSD vibes from reading this post (not really but it was stressful even though it was mostly pain free)

[Sadlonelygit]

Over 'ere, you put an offer in and if accepted, you have a 10 day cooling off period, after that it's 10% if you change your mind, hence why the housing market in France is quite stagnant.

[dern]

Update...

Purple bricks were shite and a waste of the grand I gave them. They organised a couple of viewings but we never got any feedback. Then it all went quiet and we just got a fuckwit phone us up each month telling us to make to cheaper but every time they called it was like starting the conversation from scratch, even when it was the same person.

Pulled the plug on them at the end of January and went with a local estate agents. We did have to reduce the price a bit but we were finally getting decent feedback and many many more viewers. Got an offer on the house a little over a week ago that we've accepted.

[Skub]

Local estate agents are nearly always worth a shot,as opposed to the big names. They put more effort in,don't spam you endlessly for no reason and are usually easier to pay.
When I was selling my da's house,they knew who I was no matter which one I spoke to and it was all wrapped up in weeks.

[Couchy]

I’m just buying the house two doors up from my rented place. It was on the market 8 months with a local agent and they had one viewing and no offers. No feedback and no contact. They took it off 6 weeks ago which is when I went direct to them. I’ve saved on the asking price and they’ve saved on fees, they’re moving to an empty house yet it’s still gonna take 10 weeks which is stupid for such a simple buy and sell.

[mangocrazy]

When my sister and I were selling our parent's property we both agreed that we'd cut estate agents out of the process, and just bought a 'For Sale' board to stick outside the house, and provided a load of photos to stick on the web site of the display board providers. A really nice young couple were very interested in the property, we met with them, got on really well with them and the sale was agreed. Can't remember how much it cost for the board and web space, but it was a tiny fraction of an estate agent's cut.

[cheb]

The last two house I've bought up here were estate agent free sales. Both were bank and chain free, and I was tempted to make them solicitor free too except I don't know the exact detail of what needs to be done.

The first sale took 5 weeks to complete and could have been done in four except the sellers had the removers booked and didn't want to rearrange that. The second took way longer, over 6 months, because of Scottish law detail.

[Mussels]

The last two house I've bought up here were estate agent free sales. Both were bank and chain free, and I was tempted to make them solicitor free too except I don't know the exact detail of what needs to be done.

The first sale took 5 weeks to complete and could have been done in four except the sellers had the removers booked and didn't want to rearrange that. The second took way longer, over 6 months, because of Scottish law detail.

I remember one of the supermarkets (Tesco iirc) attempt to market houses, just providing a board and an online advert. It was really popular and worked but estate agents had them shut down, they claimed it was acting as an estate agent without following the legislation.
Legislation is making it harder to avoid EAs and conveyancers, I suspect both groups lobbied for it to be like that.

[cheb]

Neither of them was publicly advertised, both of them we heard were up for sale when we were looking to buy. It helps that friends also knew we were looking to buy so could tell us what might be coming up for sale.

It's the otherside of everyone knowing your business in a small community. The latter was particularly pleasing as it's where I wanted to live, there's not likely to another one nearby for sale for 10 years or more.

[mangocrazy]

I remember one of the supermarkets (Tesco iirc) attempt to market houses, just providing a board and an online advert. It was really popular and worked but estate agents had them shut down, they claimed it was acting as an estate agent without following the legislation.
Legislation is making it harder to avoid EAs and conveyancers, I suspect both groups lobbied for it to be like that.

When I bought my first house in the early 1980s I did all the conveyancing myself, following a book that had recently been published. Everything went through OK and I used work's word processor to type up and print out all the legal documents. The day after the sale went through I went in to work to find that all my documents had been wiped - bit of a close call...