Estate Agents...or not???

[TAC]

Those that know me will know that I'm considering moving house.

Have been to look at a nice little 2-bed terraced a coupla times now. Was talking to the owners tonight and it turns out that they're looking to move to a 4-bed detached in Hatch Warren......guess what I own at the mo'? :D

I've had a couple of estate agents out to do the valuation thing...I dunno if these guys with the nice 2-bed are looking at the sort of price range that mine would go for, but it got me thinking. If I sell privately I can save between 4-5k on estate agent fees! Does anyone know anything about the pros & cons of doing it this way? (Apart from the obvious lack of exposure that you get, I mean!)

[arry]

dont know tac but a mate of mine is actually an estate agent (well thats what he calls himself, i have another name for him:D ).... i've dropped him a mail for ya and will report back moro night when he replies.

[TAC]

Cheers mate :D

[Wak]

All estate agents do is advertise your house and act as a go between yourself and potential customers, if you already have a customer then you don't need an estate agent really.

£4-5k is expensive!! I paid £900, and to be fair my sale was rather complicated and I think the estate agents earned their money in the end

[dave_s13]

Just stick a for for sale sign outside your house and see what happens, won't cost you anything to try.

[DJFish]

A mate of mine did a similar thing, he bought the house from a friend and as there were no agents fees involved they were able to come to a mutually benificial agreement on the price.
It all has to go through a solicitor anyway so there are no worries regarding the legal stuff.


Dave

[arry]

right - found out the inside info from me mate

basically:
if you buy/sell private and dont involve an agent you can leave yourself open to the other party messin about (either financially, having second thoughts, all that sort of thing) and he/she is not legally obliged to tell you a damn thing about whats going on. So in theory you could end up with a situation where youve got a solicitor working on the legal aspect for ya when really the other guy is just winding you up and wasting your time. If youve got the agent in between the level of contact and "being informed" on decisions/actions is greatly increased and it takes out the worry of trying to sell to a time waster.

Other things to consider are that an agent actively tries to sell your house, to the highest bidder - it might be that you will save £2000 by not having an agent but then if you did another buyer may turn up with an offer £5000 up on the other guys.

Agents tend to have ways/means around paying stamp duty (tax) on the sale which could save both you and the purchaser a bit of wedge. For example - if the sale is for anything over 250k, the rate of stamp duty goes up over 1%, its like the grey area on income tax where it can actually be more beneficial to be paid just under the higher tax bracket than actually in it. Therefore an agent can negotiate a bankers draft for a few extra grand over the cut off point in stamp duty - giving you an extra few quid in ya bin.

All in all its entirely possible for a private sale to commence/complete but its far more peace of mind/ease of sale for the agent to get involved and do it all for ya. My mate assures me that he does actually earn his money (but then we all say that, dont we :rolleyes: )

HTH
aaron

[Wak]

Originally posted by arry
right - found out the inside info from me mate

basically:
if you buy/sell private and dont involve an agent you can leave yourself open to the other party messin about (either financially, having second thoughts, all that sort of thing) and he/she is not legally obliged to tell you a damn thing about whats going on. So in theory you could end up with a situation where youve got a solicitor working on the legal aspect for ya when really the other guy is just winding you up and wasting your time. If youve got the agent in between the level of contact and "being informed" on decisions/actions is greatly increased and it takes out the worry of trying to sell to a time waster.



It's just as easy for a timewaster to bull**** an estate agent as it is for them to bull**** you - been there, done that, had my time wasted!:)

In fact it would probably be easier because they don't have to tell you in person etc. Remeber at school if you didn't want to tell a girl you were dumping her you'd get her/your mate to do it? Or is that just me.....