Traditional Estate agents

Citroen2cv

Am I missing something here?
Why do people continue to use the traditional estate agents to sell their house, who charge on average 1.5% of sale price, when they could be using the likes of:
<SNIPPED NAME OF RANDOM ONLINE AGENT>
These guys charge a fixed rate of 1000euro, to do the same service. You manage viewings yourself, however which can't be that hard.

BTW, I am in no way affiliated with above, and would welcome any feedback from anyone who has used the above.

The website you linked to don’t have offices, why bother paying them when you can advertise on daft and do all yourself?

I’ve just sold.a house, I used an EA, he did all the viewings, was able to tell me who the time wasters were, and able to tell me that the eventual buyer had recently sold her house. He managed the bids well, when it went well above asking, he told me in his view that the bids were now above what it was worth and that he should ask for one final bid, the lady who sold here house was the highest by only a small amount. Because of his knowledge about her, I immediately accepted her bid and the whole sale wrapped up in just over 3 weeks.

No way would I have wanted to do the viewings myself, I don’t have time, I wouldn’t know the time wasters, I wouldn’t know how much the house was worth, I wouldn’t have known that one bidder had recently sold a property and was ready to buy quickly, I wouldn’t have known when to ask for final bids. So, I got more than I thought the property was worth (a lot more than the EA charges) and the sale was completed quickly, money well spent on EA.

Woshy

My time is valuable and in no way would I be interested in doing viewings. I can barely keep on top of every thing else I have going on. I would say organising viewings could be quite time consuming.

Apart from the time and organisation issue, I have zero interest in meeting with potential buyers and being involved in trying to talk up the house, answer questions etc. I would rather keep my distance

Different strokes for different folks. You say you can't understand why anyone would use an EA - you're not thinking much beyond your own situation then. There are plenty of reasons why people want to pay for that service.

tapsaff

The age of the traditional model for estate agent fees is coming to end. Whether they like it or not. Stating the obvious but the market dicates price more than anything. Why pay 1.5% when you don't have too. I've had experience and went aroudn them all. The amount of spoof was unbelievable. Went with a fixed fee agent and got it done within 5 weeks.

1874

tapsaff wrote: »

The age of the traditional model for estate agent fees is coming to end. Whether they like it or not. Stating the obvious but the market dicates price more than anything. Why pay 1.5% when you don't have too. I've had experience and went aroudn them all. The amount of spoof was unbelievable. Went with a fixed fee agent and got it done within 5 weeks.

Can you PM me who you used? Regarding the fixed fee, have been quoyed 1-1.5%

Dolbhad

As a buyer looking at houses, some auctioneers have been great and some not. Some I’ve thought if I’m ever selling I would use them. Some don’t care and show you the house and off you go. I’ve had some check us out - what we do, proof of funds, where we work, our family situation and try sell the house to use on why it suits us. And when your looking in certain areas you see the same auctioneers who have let me know what other houses they have coming up etc when we were out bidded so can come with a customer base.

Those auctioneers would think they earn their fee. If I was selling, I don’t want the hassle of organising viewings and weeding out the time wasters. As a purchaser I want the auctioneer to answer my questions - who’s selling and why etc.

I have been to two house viewings with those online auctioneers and they have been the first. I remember asking was the house empty and the girl didn’t know. She look like she was was a college student. She said someone would email me with the answers - left my email address and followed up a few times myself but never got a response.

I’d seen online ads for those auctioneers looking for sales rep turn up for a few hours to supervise the viewings which is what those girls were doing. I can do that myself and would rather save on paying an online auctioneer.