[Closed] Local estate agent or online?

We sold with Purplebricks. We've also sold with a variety of local agents in the past.

Depending on the area they might not have many local reps, so ask how many they have as if you expect them to do the viewings that will be important.

The listing they'll make and put on RightMove etc will be typically good, certainly no worse than many local agents I've seen.

But: their post-sales is horrific. Emails will get ignored. Phoning them up will be a different person every time, so you'll be repeating yourself constantly. Our chain collapsed a few times (thanks to Covid) but every time it reformed the agents either side stopped going via Purplebricks and spoke to either us/solicitors/the other agents directly. When we needed their help, it took a week for anyone to reply.

I'm sure if your sale goes swimmingly that won't be a huge problem, but ours wasn't and they were entirely useless. I've sold houses with agents where I'd speak daily to the person dealing with our sale and he was chasing everyone and ensuring things happened.

I would go with a good local firm. Worth every penny.

I have just moved and they were great. PB fu@ked up the first sale and the agent managed to find someone to step in.

Depending on the area they might not have many local reps

There's 1.
Based 30 miles away.
We're 50 miles away.

Sold my property last year with purple bricks and would highly recommend them. Used a local estate agent for the property before that and was shocking.

Think it really depends on the agents. Best thing with purple bricks for me was being able to do things online and outside of office hours which while working was brilliant.

Sold in 3 weeks and used purple bricks conveyancers which were in Glasgow who although slower than I wanted had all the paperwork done in a few weeks.

The other good thing about local agents is that they sometimes have folks on their "looking" list and you can get a sale without even going to market properly. Bit of luck involved there but worth it's weight in gold.

I would try on local fb community groups first, the ones i am on theres quite a dialogue between buyers, sellers, landlords, tenants.

Not sure of Scot regs but the tenanted sales I see on rightmove have started stating all compliance in place, for England that's epc, eicr, gas if installed. For me as a buyer if i see a sale with potentially tenants in situ i would ask and expect all the regs done at vendors expense.

Not sure of Scot regs but the tenanted sales I see on rightmove have started stating all compliance in place, for England that’s epc, eicr, gas if installed. For me as a buyer if i see a sale with potentially tenants in situ i would ask and expect all the regs done at vendors expense.

We have it all.
Scottish Government Template tenancy, repairing standards, EPC, gas & electric certs last week, legionella RA & plan, fire alarm system check & tenant training. Registered landlord. Deposit Scheme.

Allways let at 5-6% net return for the last decade. A queue of people every time we offer it - it's only ever been word of mouth or notice in shop window.

I'm hoping it will go simply...

Every time use a good local agent

I hated trying to speak to agents if it was online only. Chasing home reports, incorrect details. No local knowledge of where the property was (rural Scotland so postcodes are toss)

Comparison wise the best local agents would call back for feed back, give pointers on locations ect

We used Purple Bricks last time we sold. Can do stuff via the app but we also had a local agent and someone to do viewings if we were out. Rate the service better than the 2 locals we also got out to value the house. Its not all online f you don't want it to be but we found it so much easier than a traditional agent open 9-5. (who we bought through and were useless)

As a buyer last year I looked at 3 houses on with Purlple bricks. Massive PITA - for an online only thing their website and app suck. It can be really hard to actually make a booking through their website if any kind of iteration is required to find a mutually acceptable time.

It won't make any difference from the sellers point of view in a hot market but it certainly wouldn't help if selling is tough.

We sold our house last year through a local agent who were good. They were fixed price with a good reputation - cost difference vs online was minimal really. Not sure what the estate agent market is like up there but certainly the days of everyone slapping a hefty % on are gone.