[Closed] Online estate agent - House Network - the adventure begins!

Spelling error in thread title - doh!

We are in exactly the same boat at the moment, first time selling/ buying and went for housesimple.
They were the cheapest by far and have been excellent. We plumped to do everything through them in the end, other than the EPC.
Despite a few hiccups with buyers pulling out we're now well into the process and should be moving in the next few weeks ( That's blown it now I've mentioned it, something's bound to go wrong!) 😯 😆

With the price difference, I really can't see why anybody would use a high street agent, we saved around £1500 and that's just on a £100000 property.

Am I right in thinking that you pay these online EA's before they have actually sold the property or is there a fee to get the ball rolling and then a fee when they actually sell?
With a High Street EA you only pay if they sell the property so that would seem a good incentive for them to get their finger out.
I agree that choice of High Street EA's can be a mine field and hope that the online EA's will wipe out the worst.

The number of viewings made it 100% better for us to sell via agent.

I would have been keen to sell our old place via the online ones..
But the agent we chatted to said he had someone on their books looking for a property like ours (sitting tenant) and was keen to buy.
I saw it not £3000 for doing naff all work by the EA, but £3000 for doing [b]exactly the right amount of work[/b]!
House sold 48 hours later!

DrP

We paid £516 upfront this was 12mths marketing on their own site, think it was around 6 months advertising on all the other main sites, right move, zoopla etc, also included were professional photos and floor plan, and for sale board.

They fielded the calls from prospective buyers finding out the status in any chain, mortgages etc.
I'd then get an email, which is where I would pick a mutually agreeable, time/ date for the viewing which I would conduct myself. Any negotiations were handled by them.

I particularly liked the booking system it probably took half an hour from a prospective buyer contacting them to me confirming a booking, something which seemed to take an age with some of the houses we viewed marketed by H/S agents.
They recommended solicitors, and mortgage advisers both of which we used, these have all been excellent and professional as well.
Finally, no I do not have to pay anything extra now the house is sold, I couldn't recommend them enough and if I'm ever moving again this is the route I'll be taking.

I used housenetwork to sell my house in 2010, totally trouble free and I would recommend.

I paid £700 up front and nothing more to pay. The premier package was £599+VAT and I paid £99 for the EPC as its done at the same time. I had a voucher code for 5% off (EKMJJZUBHM if anyone else uses them) which I used to make it £700.

Normal estate agents would cost me at least £1500 without the EPC. I don't have that sort of money to waste, and even if I was loaded I can't see the point of handing over more money to have exactly the same work done.

Only negative I can find is there is no high street presence, but that's only needed for the houses that might appeal to the older generations who still go round the EA's (retirement houses, bungalows??). Also you have to show people round yourself but most people prefer being shown round by the householder anyway.

I'll update on Friday once the photos have been taken etc.

If the market is up and you can do the viewings then online works, if the market is down then go local.

If the market is up and you can do the viewings then online works, if the market is down then go local.

But if the market is down that doesn't mean the available buyers all start going to high street EA's rather than looking online? I can't see the logic there...

The only thing high street EA's might have is a waiting list of potential buyers - but those buyers are still going to be looking online as well. The lists of potential buyers the high street EA's have are just there so they can make the sales without having to go through the advertising process - they don't charge [i]you [/i]any less though!!

IME, the value of paying a lawyer (in Scotland) is the negotiating and advice. I have made much better deals on buying twice and selling once by using a good lawyer, IMHO naturally.

I looked at selling myself in Edinburgh, but ESPC have such a stranglehold, and in a buyers market they are where people go.

Horses for courses, etc.

As much as I hate estate agents. The ones who sold ours did good *grumbles* The folk who bought ours were renting via the agent and were actively looking for a property like ours. We sold in just over a week (offer tennis).

I looked at selling myself in Edinburgh

piccies please 🙂

The only thing high street EA's might have is a waiting list of potential buyers

This is the argument that came up with every high street agent we approached, surely some of you I.T bods out there are missing a trick?
Maybe an app or website where people can register their requirements / area etc, that the online estate agents can then use to build client bases?

Don't forget in 5 years time, when your a millionaire, where you got the idea! 😆

Oh, and should have really gone in my first post, Good Luck with the sale OP!

s'funny,
I'm looking for a house at the moment. In 3 months of scouring Rightmove, Zoopla and Onthemarket, I've yet to see a "Housenetwork" ad. In fact, I've never heard of them. Are you sure they'll be giving your property the right exposure?

Are they similar to Emoov? I've seen their properties; some have been on for a couple of months or more...
This is in Surrey, where good properties move within a week.

I've just had a look at their website. Utter shite.
All geared to getting sellers to sell via them but bugger all to help buyers search for properties, save for a tiny search bar in the top right corner, which is probably just as well as they had nothing for sale within ten miles of me.

I sold my last house on the work notice board.

This was in 2007 before EPCs but I don’t think they are hard to sort out. All I did was put up an advert with my email address on. Turned out a girl in another nearby office had an offer on the house over the road, ours was nicer and priced at a few grand more. Everything went fine. There is not a lot to selling a house really.

It is all about finding a buyer and the local agents are best placed but beyond that it really is pretty simple.

If you go to rightmove and look at their ads in there you can see there are quite a lot of them.

I can't see the point of them offering to search properties for sale on their own website as they put them all on the popular online ones (zoopla, RM etc) - no point in adding a service to their own website which is covered well enough by the big players.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/estate-agents/agent/House-Network/National-15062.html

Link to their properties on that page, 1000+

Who finds properties based on who is selling them anyway? You go to a site that includes them all. Not the individual sellers.

Agent came round today to take pics and do the EPC. Very nice bloke, said HN were really good to work for. Spent a long time getting the right shots and doing a good plan of the house. Well chuffed at the visit.

I will get an email in the next 48hrs of my house listing which I can edit and choose pictures etc. He must have taken around 50 photos minimum which is a lot for a 2 bed terrace!

Update - got the listing through within 24hrs for me to review/edit (they said 48hrs!). Just a couple of minor alterations and I rejigged the photos a little.

Here it is http://www.housenetwork.co.uk/my_site.asp?id=eldonrdhn&house=1 (and before you ask about security - all my bikes are now elsewhere just in case!!)

I confirmed the listing and within 1 hour got a call from House Network to say someone wanted to do a viewing. Result! It's not even gone on rightmove or Zoopla yet so he must have seen it on the HN site.

I suppose I need to find somewhere else to live......

Now on Rightmove! http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-34690368.html

So after the first week I spoke to our senior negotiator at HouseNetwork. They have a system where you tell them when you want to be called. When she rang she said she'd already checked my listing and said it was good with the right amount of pictures but she did say there is a lot of similar houses at the same price in my area so I won't sell ultra fast but will sell. She asked me to include details of the local school catchment, something I hadn't thought about as we don't have kids, but the details are on there now.

Got the right move statistics now which might indicate that we might need to adjust how we market the asking price but I'm going to leave it for the time being as we have a viewing this weekend.

We've now had four viewings. House network have been very good so far and really helped things along. Detailed discussions with them about our price and analysis of the rightmove stats as soon as they were available.

We had an offer put in on our house which I think was reasonable so things have moved very quickly!

We're just in the process of buying a house and renting out our old flat.

We looked at a few that were on the online agents sites but they were all ££££ over priced and seemed to be on the market for ages. The house we're buying was never even on the agents website, they just phoned us up and said they had somewhere and they reckoned our positon could get us a good deal on it. Hours later it was all sorted! As DrP said, its money for exactly the right ammount of work.

Renting the flat was the same, they had a tennant on the first day.

None of the house-network, tepilo houses we saw have sold. IMO its a mix of people setting unrealistic prices and a lack of actual marketing. Putting it on right move or zoopla is easy, but at least half the houses we saw weren't on there. As one agent told us, they only make it to those sites if they've not sold by other means, so you're not looking at the best properties, so their job was more about helping buyers they knew were looking than helping the sellers because there isn't much you can do from that side, the house is what it is. The seller just foots the bill.

I think there is a lot of speculative sellers wanting too much for their houses at the moment.

I sold my house six months ago & my girlfriend has just sold hers.
We looked at the online only but if you find a decent local agent they do earn their money.
Some of them do justify their awful reputations though. One big high street agent wanted 3% whilst others were quoting 1-1.25%. When on the follow up call I cited high price at the main reason for not going with them they immediately matched the other offers & slagged off those competing agents.
The agent we just used to sell my girlfriend's house had the keys to conduct the viewings as we were away on holiday.
From going on the market, he had 4 viewings & sold it for the asking price within 48hrs.

With House Network you are free to set your own price and you can change it to what you want. I suppose there might be a lot of people setting a high price and sticking to it even though it isn't selling. We got a load of tailored advice on our house from HN once the rightmove stats had come in advising us to stick at the price we had it at for the moment as there was a glut of similar properties in the same area at the same price which is unusual but not unexpected I suppose for an area with a lot of terraced houses in it. The quality of our house compared to the competition appears to have won out it seems as I reckon we've been offered a decent price.

Well it seems like we are done! Just accepted an offer on our house for a decent amount more than I was expecting to get for it. Chuffed to bits about the couple who are buying the house, they remind us of me and my wife when we bought the house 12 years ago.

Now all I have to do is find somewhere else to live..... 😯

Small update. Housenetwork have been fantastic, great comma with them and they have been faultless. We are now at SSTC and they are buying time for me with my buyer until I can find somewhere else to live. Love their online system and I would recommend to anyone.

[i]With the price difference, I really can't see why anybody would use a high street agent, we saved around £1500 and that's just on a £100000 property. [/i]

So if an Estate Agent had got just 2% more on the sale price, you'd have been better off?

For our last sale I used a local ('village') estate agent. It was pretty much sold after I'd put the phone down and he came around later that day to view the house.

Sold to a retired couple who wanted to be near their grandchildren, no chain and they paid the price asked (on the stamp limit).

Small update. Housenetwork have been fantastic, great comma with them and they have been faultless. We are now at SSTC and they are buying time for me with my buyer until I can find somewhere else to live. Love their online system and I would recommend to anyone.

Nice One!
I'll hush my mouth...

we saved around £1500 and that's just on a £100000 property.

So if an Estate Agent had got just 2% more on the sale price, you'd have been better

I can't see your point - I used an Estate Agent.

Then you didn't try very hard with the agents. Average fee here is 1-1.5%

With the price I got for the house I paid 0.6%

And the fee is the same no matter how expensive the house so if I had sold a £250k house the fee would have been 0.25%.

The only thing high street EA's might have is a waiting list of potential buyers

I went in to our local estate agents a few years ago to tell them I have just sold my house and I was on the market to buy a four bed house in the area. They told me to keep an eye on the website and didn't even want to take me details so they could get in touch if something came up!

I woul dbe tempted to use online next time but there is also now a local guy who is getting a good reputation for knowing the parket, the customers and taking responsibility for his business so looks like he woul dbe more proactive than the other in the area (who nearly all have a poor reputation)

Franksinatra - I think we have a couple of new agents in our area who might be doing the same thing, internet based and no high street presence but just operating locally. I viewed one house one was selling and they seemed very good from that limited perspective. I think that maybe the way forward, more like the USA model of estate agent. I know a realtor in Las Vegas and he explained how it worked over there, although more expensive than the way we do things I think it is very much geared towards the customer and the agent gets nothing until the people are moved into their house and happy. The realtor does everything, markets the property and does the legal stuff etc

Estate agent fees percentage wise have stayed the same, whilst house prices have outstripped inflation. Do they really earn all that extra cash, or should it be a flat fee service?

Estate agent fees percentage wise have stayed the same, whilst house prices have outstripped inflation. Do they really earn all that extra cash, or should it be a flat fee service?

Estate Agent Fees have dropped over the last 20-30 years.
Way back I had a friend working as an Estate Agent, charging 2.5-3%. He was always moaning about Mann &Co cutting the bottom out of his business by charging [i]only[/i] 1.5%. This was the early '80s.
Now 1.5% would be considered pricey.
I don't think they're making [i]that[/i] much of a killing. Volumes must be right down.

So if an Estate Agent had got just 2% more on the sale price, you'd have been better off?

My house set the new ceiling price for our street, so I doubt very much any estate agent would have gotten an extra 2%, especially considering they were telling me to market it at less than it sold for.

I moved into my new house over the weekend and most definitely consider myself £1500 better off. 😀 😉
Good job too, because Lord knows I'm gonna need every penny putting this one right! 😯