There was a post about selling your home privately, now I'm interested in the other side of the game--though I don't know if the rules of the game will stay the same by the time I get to buy a house... My main question is, supposing you hire independent surveyors to value the property for you (probably more reliable than agents themselves), and also hire solicitors to get you through the paperwork, will it end up costing more than the £3000 that you save by buying privately?
Seb
Don't be silly. In a private sale it's the seller, not the buyer, who saves the £3000.
Wot e said
'cept a canny buyer will split the difference and save 1500.
Indeed. I've just sold privately and was happy to share what I saved with the buyer. I could never have sold it for that price through an agent.
One way of looking at it is this:
Since the EA's fee is generally paid by the seller out of funds which come from the buyer in the first place, one could argue that it's really the buyer who pays the fee. If you want to be moral about it, you as seller should not have kept any of the saving, the buyer should have had the benefit of all of it.
But this way is wrong. The correct way is this:
The market value is what the buyer is prepared to pay. The seller therefore generally gets market value minus EA fee. It is not the case that market value is what the seller gets and that the buyer pays MV+fee. Therefore if EA fee is zero, it stands to reason that the seller deserves to keep all the saved fee.
After all, had the seller used an EA, and this EA had found the same buyer, he would not have offered 3000 more for it than in fact he did privately, would he? So you can't argue that the buyer has saved anything. That's why the first way is wrong.
How do you know? Was the difference across a stamp duty boundary?
Ok, perhaps a better way of putting it would be that I *would" never have sold it for that price through an agent. It wasn't a stamp duty boundary, just that deducting an agent's commission from that price would have left less money than I'd be prepared to accept.
I liked your market value analysis. However when selling one often considers more than just price. For example, if time is a factor then one may be prepared to accept a lower offer from a buyer with no chain over a higher offer from one in a long chain.
Having always sold through an agent in the past, I regarded the saving on commission as "wiggle room". Now that I have experience of selling privately I'd imagine that the next time I'll be a little less likely to attach any special significance to any "saved commission".
Yes, but the seller may offer a more competitive price to the buyer as he/she does not need to factor in estate agency fees! So there are benefits on both sides.
It will depend on whether it's a sellers' or buyers' market--come to think of it that's true for all kinds of sales deals...
Seb
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