buy or sell with­out an es­tate agent

Manag­ing a house sale or pur­chase over the in­ter­net can save you a whole heap of agents’ fees – and with our guide, it’s safe and easy, too…

Buy­ing or sell­ing?  Cut costs by tak­ing mat­ters into your own hands

Us­ing a high-street es­tate agent to han­dle the sale or pur­chase of your home has, up un­til now, been the tra­di­tional op­tion.  But with the rise of on­line agents, do­ing it your­self is a lot less com­pli­cated than it may seem.  In terms of how much in­put you have, you can go it alone com­pletely (in which case see cit­i­zen­sad­vice.org.uk to avoid any pit­falls), or choose be­tween var­i­ous web­sites that give you as much, or as lit­tle, as­sis­tance as you re­quire. 

Sell­ing

An on­line agent doesn’t have a walk-in of­fice or specialist knowl­edge of the area, but they could save you a tidy sum – enough to fit a new bath­room or kitchen in many cases.  The way they do this is to charge a fixed fee (as lit­tle as £40, up to

a few hun­dred, de­pend­ing on the pack­age you choose), re­gard­less of your sell­ing price.  By con­trast, a high-street agent will charge a per­cent­age of your fi­nal sale price, so this is only an es­ti­mate un­til you sell, and is usu­ally into the thou­sands. 

Ac­cord­ing to web agent tepilo.co.uk, 98 per cent of prop­erty searches now be­gin on­line, so it’s more im­por­tant that you’re there rather than in a shop win­dow.  Web­sites such as isales-uk.co.uk are ideal for help­ing you get started and let­ting you take con­trol.  For more as­sis­tance and, im­por­tantly, be­ing listed on right­move.co.uk and zoopla.co.uk, sites such as emoov.co.  uk of­fer a choice of op­tions, from sim­ply help­ing you list your place, to pho­tog­ra­phy, ar­rang­ing view­ings and tak­ing on the ne­go­ti­a­tions (which can be good if you want to de­per­son­alise things).  One as­pect they all have in com­mon is that you will han­dle the view­ings your­self.  This might seem a bit daunt­ing, but you re­ally are the best per­son to do this as you will be able to an­swer all the ques­tions and you know the area.  Mov­ing house with­out a high-street es­tate agent is a very real op­tion and, with­out a doubt, will save you money. 

Buy­ing

The big­ger on­line com­pa­nies, such as emoov.co.uk, ad­ver­tise on right­move.co.uk and zoopla.co.uk, so you can sim­ply browse these.  Al­ter­na­tively, you can visit web­sites in­di­vid­u­ally – it all de­pends on how much time you’re pre­pared to spend.  When you are in­ter­ested in a prop­erty, they will put you in touch with the owner and things will go from there.  De­pend­ing on

what ‘pack­age’ the owner has signed up for, you may only en­counter them when view­ing, or they may be in­volved with the whole process, ne­go­ti­a­tions and all. 

Pri­vate sale

If a prop­erty is be­ing sold pri­vately be­tween two par­ties you don’t need an agent at all.  You may wish to use one for a free val­u­a­tion, but there are sites such as net­house­prices.com which com­pare prices in your area if both par­ties are happy with that.  You will, how­ever, still need an En­ergy Per­for­mance Cer­tifi­cate (see check­point 3, right) and a so­lic­i­tor for the pa­per­work. 

GET AS MUCH, OR AS LIT­TLE, AS­SIS­TANCE AS YOU LIKE FROM AN ON­LINE AGENT – AND SAVE YOUR­SELF MONEY IN THE PROCESS