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Tim Watts[_3_] Tim Watts[_3_] is offline
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Default Anyone got experience of online estate agents?

On 09/11/16 02:01, John Rumm wrote:
On 08/11/2016 21:51, Tim Watts wrote:
On 08/11/16 20:43, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Tue, 08 Nov 2016 19:14:09 -0000, Mr Pounder Esquire
wrote:

Murmansk wrote:
My house is in an area where they sell really easily so I'm thinking
of using

https://www.visum.co.uk/Pricing/Sales

All I want is for my house to appear on Rightmove and this seems the
cheapest way to achieve that - once I've found interested buyers I
can do the rest myself.

A bloke about a mile away from me tried something similar.
Nothing happened.

I've seen houses for sale (in decent areas) with just a mobile number on
a home made sign. Not sure where they advertised, but they sold as
quick as any estate agent ones.


Apart from exposure and showing people around (the latter is eminently
DIYable), Estate Agents off nothing else of value.


While that is a commonly held point of view, I am not convinced that is
true...

The real world performance of the various "online only" agents seems to
indicate that they have a lower completion rate than the better[1]
traditional agents.

And the security side of the process (checks, surveys etc) are handled
by others and would be done just the same for a non agent advert - so
really, if you can get the eyeballs on your house and have the time to
show people around and answer the phone, there's no disadvantage.


While one might argue that an online agent can do the upload to the
property portals and some marketing, what they seem poorer at is chain
management and sales progression, and its here where the online agents
tend to lose sales. They also tend to lack local knowledge and their
valuations are likely to be less accurate, which risks you selling to
low or too slow (if at all).


I guess it depends how hot your property is.

If it's slow, a real agent might a) make proactive calls to buyers on
his books; b) ring people and talk up the sale, pressurising them to
make an offer before someone else does.

OTOH if you sell a flat in Sutton, London (the less stabby part near the
station), the thing will sell itself and you have a Zoopla's worth of
real Land Registry sales data from 3+ months ago of identical flats to
gauge the selling price.