Estate Agent Fees

talkshowhost · 2 Aug 2016 at 09:33

Hi All,

We are in the process of getting our flat valued and wondered what fees people have managed to agree with the estate agent as we have never sold before.

I have googled and they seem to vary from 0.75% to 3% but would be interested to hear some examples to see what can be achieved.

The flat is in East London.

Cheers.

Skillmister · 2 Aug 2016 at 09:49

Inb4 why not use Purplebricks etc?

talkshowhost · 2 Aug 2016 at 13:05

Skillmister said:
Inb4 why not use Purplebricks etc?

Thanks never thought to check out online places and now have PB coming round for a valuation but read mixed reviews online.

Still be interesting to compare estate agent fees as this one knows the area we are selling well.

ObSene · 2 Aug 2016 at 20:42

We used https://www.housenetwork.co.uk/ when we moved 4 years ago. Not saying you'll have the same success but we sold ours in 3 days. Their costs were about £1k.

Don't bother with their conveyancing though....not so great.

Burned_Alive · 3 Aug 2016 at 00:59

1% was the best we could negotiate (Cheshire).

Skillmister · 3 Aug 2016 at 08:30

1% is the best I ever see unless a property is worth sub 75k or so, obviously that doesn't apply in London

flowrider99 · 3 Aug 2016 at 08:46

1% is the best fee! Thats £1k plus VAT for every £100k of the sell price. Ridiculous, I dont think I will be using a high street estate agent when I sell my house.

t-rex · 3 Aug 2016 at 09:25

Ex-colleague of mine sold his £400k flat for a 2% fee. Absolutely crackers that the estate agents are getting £8k for taking a few photos and showing people round. He made no effort to negotiate, such a waste of money.

Rotty · 3 Aug 2016 at 10:29

1% + vat is the normal that you will be able to negotiate

fireisdangerous · 3 Aug 2016 at 10:35

We just paid 1.25% and were based in Cambridgeshire did sell our house for 11k over market value in 2 days but since then they have been crap in making sure the buyer is getting all her paperwork sent to solicitors etc

Sold our previous flat with hatched and was much cheaper but had to do viewings which is fine back then as it was a 2 bed flat and we didn't have kids back then.

LeeUK · 3 Aug 2016 at 23:57

Dodgy estate agent round here wants £1700 on a £140,000 asking price. Still wants £1700 if it goes for less.

I wouldn't use them.

talkshowhost · 4 Aug 2016 at 00:11

Thanks for all the replies. We had the estate agent round and the lowest we could get them was 1.5% + VAT so need to consider our options now.

flowrider99 · 4 Aug 2016 at 10:37

talkshowhost said:
Thanks for all the replies. We had the estate agent round and the lowest we could get them was 1.5% + VAT so need to consider our options now.

Look on line, Purple Bricks and others have a set fee. No way I would use a high street estate agent on a house sell over £100k if 1% is the lowest rate. My house would cost me a fortune to sell.

Simon42 · 4 Aug 2016 at 15:26

Although I would probably use an online agent in most cases, I chose not to last time I moved to save doing the viewings as I was very busy with work and viewings are a costly extra for most online companies.

I got my rate down to 0.8% +VAT and that wasn't an expensive property. As property is in reasonable demand in our area I asked the estate agent to organise viewings on certain days when possible to avoid interruptions for us and to increase pressure on potential buyers without going the route of an open day.

In the end and we had a number of almost full days of viewings and on most of them I was away with work or visiting relatives. So for me the cost was all about the viewings and so not quite as bad. I certainly wouldn't pay high street estate agent fees if I was doing the viewings myself.

BaJ · 4 Aug 2016 at 17:09

We managed to get 0.5% +VAT from a local agent recently, they have a bit of a reputation of "stack 'em high, sell them cheap", but we accepted an offer a couple of £k above the agents valuation within a few days.

That wasn't an expensive property either, <£160k