This is

as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

. Here I write about many things. In the past I wrote about other things but the past is past. I write code for people to play with, I write about my life on Twitter, and I write here.

On I wrote Selling houses with online estate agents, on the subject of Help and Houses.

Having now been on the housing market for some considerable time and not having my estate agent do anything about selling, I've been toying with the idea of using an "online estate agent" like 121move.co.uk or housenetwork.co.uk. They charge not a lot, because they don't *do* a lot; they put your house on RightMove and a few other online places, they field calls from punters looking to book viewings, and they charge a flat rate of about four hundred quid rather than 1.5% of the sale price.

But...I don't know anything about them. There are two concerns. The first is that estate agents do two things (well, three, if you count "fuck all" as a thing); the first is to advertise my house (which online ones do), and the second is that once an offer has been accepted, they run all the conveyancing stuff. Going the online cut-out-the-middle-man route handles the advertisement, but not the conveyancing, and I don't know anything about that or how hard it is or how it happens.

The second worry is that maybe it's just a scam.

So, anyone know anything about them?

Paul

I thought your solicitor does the conveyancing not the estate agent (unless you are in Scotland when they are one and the same)

The other thing estate agents can do is show people round if you are away - we couldn't use an online one as we needed someone to show the punters round.

I reckon you should contact a few solictors/conveyancers and see if they have had any dealings with the online outfits yet and get some feedback.

sil

Paul: ah, the advantage with working from home is that I can show people around myself :)

Agreed that the brief actually *does* the conveyancing, but it's a question of co-ordinating all the stuff that needs doing. If I hand that all off the the brief it'll cost a fortune, won't it?

Fishter

In my experience (three purchases, two sales), the estate agent does nowt beyond holding a set of keys to give to the new owners. One even had the affront to suggest he'd been "working very hard on this deal" when I said I hadn't heard from him since he told me that an offer had been accepted on my flat (it had been eight weeks).

My advice (obviously, this is from a random guy on the internet, so I won't take offence if you ignore it!), is to find a local solicitor, one which has been in business for a few years. Use them for the conveyancing. They'll know the local area, have the contacts at the council for searches etc. Also, you'll have an office to go to for a face to face meeting to sign the documentation. This is a good idea.

Finally, you'll end up doing a lot of phoning to find out what's going on. This is normal - although it shouldn't be.

Si Jobling

Have you looked at Tepilo?

We've used it for renting our property out (which obviously has less work involved) but to great success. They've got a friendly support network in the background too so you've nothing to lose by adding your house to it.

As for conveyancing, I'm sure you could arrange something directly. All the estate agents do is call other people to do the job.

James Henstridge

I haven't sold a house, but have bought one. I used a local solicitor who specialised in conveyance, and it wasn't particularly expensive.

If you get your real estate agent to handle the conveyance, then they are probably just hiring a similar lawyer and adding a commission on top of that, so going direct should be a fair bit cheaper.

I wouldn't recommend trying to do it yourself, since there are a lot of details you might miss. I can't remember all the things my solicitor brought up, but there were a few I would never have thought of.

LetPropertyRentProperty

Maybe you can find something like this for buying and selling:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Whats-the-difference-between-traditional-and-online-letting-agents

eMoov

A proper online estate agent does everything that a traditiona, High Street agent does. But for much less.

If the online estate agent is a member of the Property Ombudsman Scheme and an established name, you have little to fear.

Andrew Weston

We are online estate agants. We do everything a normal estate agent does, except "fuck all!" and except conducted viewings.

We do it far more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost and yes it does work. We do actually sell peoples houses!

Solicitor do the conveyancing by the way, not estate agents.

Andrew Weston

And just in case you were wondering our website is http://www.move4us.co.uk

Glagow Estate Agents

I think you are being a bit hard on us online estate agents. Would you rather pay £4000 or £400?

eMove Online Estate Agents

If Online Estate Agents were a SCAM then we wouldnt offer a service offering you the opportunity to pay 0.5% on completion. A huge majority of our business has come from a high street estate agent who has been unable to sell the property due to their lack of national online presence and hey presto we have then gone on to sell the property. Most people having being brain washed by the High Street estate agency concept and their justification of fee's for years are still fairly un-educated by the online estate agency model. A good online estate agent has a conveyancing department and handles the sale from start to finish. With regards to conduction viewings, who knows your property better than you??? Imagine a viewer asking the estate agent all sorts of questions that he cant answer, surely that looks worse to the viewer than having direct liasons with the seller who can answer all their questions. In addition to this online estate agents are heaps cheaper than the high street.

www.emoveuk.com

Sell your property online

Hi there, Why dont you try letsmoveyou.co.uk very helpful indeed

Estate Agents Glasgow

Yeah we do the same, you cannot run an online estate agents without selling property. In order to grow you need referals from people you have sold for. Anyway in the market these days if High Street had lots of buyers on their books they would be selling lots of properties, and they are not.

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