Selling house without estate agent

In message , John-Smith writes

What you are really saying is that one central organisation needs to have a website with every property on it. The either the same, or a different organisation, will have every selling price available.

Sounds like a monopoly, (or an oligopoly if there are a few), to me. Unless it's government run, that's a licence to print money. In fact, if it is government run, it is still a licence to print money.

The valuation idea still does not get over the fact that they will be historic. In addition, it will not give an idea of condition.

In message , John-Smith writes

This may be because experience has told them that "self sold" sales have a high chance of falling through.

This already happens. It's done at the Land Registry. And at least in Scotland Joe Punter can get the info from myhouseprice.com.

Well, with ESPC you don't need to be online, as you can just visit the centre's display area in person, or pick up the weekly rag from anywhere.

Solicitors don't have a de jure monopoly on selling property, anyone can do it. But in Scotland they have a de facto monopoly as very few vendors don't use one. Moreover, in Edinburgh, most solicitors are members of ESPC, which does little more than pooled advertising. This benefits everybody except vendors wishing to shun solicitors, or vendors who use non-member solicitors.

I agree, but in Edinburgh that critical mass has been reached. If as a buyer you look only in ESPC's list, their premises, or on their website, it's pretty unlikely you will miss out on the property which is perfect for you.

It'd just be an advertising monopoly, not a selling one.

Not a problem. People buying will be able to get an idea of recent trends and use them to extrapolate from the historic to the likely present and immediate future. Good enough in most cases.

Not often relevant, if price movements are large compared to the likely cost of improving condition. Location, location, location are still way above condition in the list of things to look out for.

Why do you think that might be?

If you reading all the posts under this topic is will give you a clue.

Our last house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. Most people driving into the cul-de-sac, drove up to the end to turn around. After we had given up on estate agents (the property market was dead in Stoke on Trent) I desparately wanted to sell on the Internet, but it was the private "For Sale" sign that did the trick.

On your "For Sale" sign, put your phone number rather than "apply within". We had people sitting in their car outside the house calling us on their mobile asking if they could view. I don't think we ever got an unexpected knock on the door.

Graham

In message , John-Smith writes

Because they do??

Thanks for all the interesting replies. Lots for me to mull over here.

I have used estate agents before, both to buy and sell and my experience of them has never been that good.

On one occasion they continually sent me time wasters and people who simply wanted to while away a Sunday afternoon and who had no intention of buying ANY property let alone mine.

I have had experience of them not passing on offers - I even put an offer thru one vendor's door in the end.

I am not anti estate agent despite all this and realise they have a valuable part to play but I am mistrustful. I've had 5 valuations on my house and they all vary wildly which doesn't help. Aldo, despite much advice I have read previously in the press about make sure you negotiate your fees - none of the 5 wanted to. It was a take it or leave it attitude and something like a 6 week contract.

As I'm not in a hurry to sell - I am going to give the DIY route a go - nothing ventured and all that.

I have looked at some of the websites mentioned in this thread and none of them seem to tell you how long a place has been on the market - nor why they are still advertising places with SOLD stamped across them.

Thanks again

dan

What I was getting at was that this is most likely a correlation, not a causal relationship.

At present, self sellers are such a small % of the vendor population that they are probably mostly tight people who want to save every penny. As the concept becomes mainstream, this will disappear.

rightmove may get lots of hits (many of them probably from people like me just having a look at prices) but that's backed by estate agents. I doubt that self-sell sites get many hits; there's a chicken and egg situation that there's no point looking until there are lots of properties. When I was looking two years ago I tried a couple of non-agent sites but there were no more than a couple of houses on each in my area, so it wasn't worth the effort.

I don't see why it shouldn't happen - indeed it's maybe a bit surprising if ebay isn't doing it (I haven't looked).

For fairly standard houses I think an hour or two looking at rightmove would give you a pretty good idea of what to ask.

I think that's exactly right, estate agents are providing a marketplace because otherwise there's no easy way for buyers and sellers to find each other, but at least in principle the web could replace that.

Certainly from the buyer's POV I found it hard to see that the agents were doing much, apart from phoning me occasionally to complain about delays which were actually down to the vendor's solicitor ... the agents rarely seemed to know anything about a property, e.g. one seemed amazed that I might want to know about ground rent and service charges in connection with a leasehold flat, and had no clue what they might be.

Whose trick? This is fine for the agents, but not much use for people trying to avoid their fees!

I was looking at it from the point of view of convenience to buyers. This way they don't have to traipse round dozens of estate agents, be it in person or by searching dozens of websites, all with different interfaces. Agents are not, after all, in competition with each other vis-a-vis buyers of te same property, since it is unusual for a vendor to list the property with more than one agent. (Isn't it?)

You're right, of course, that it doesn't help vendors wanting to list their property on the cheap. In principle, though, I don't see why the estate agencies' cartel's website company should not take adverts from non-agents for a low fee.

Allowing it would give formal recognition to the fact that estate agents do more to justify their fee than simply advertising, and if a vendor is prepared to do without that extra service, and will likely as a result either get lucky but probably command a lower sale price, or more likely suffer so much frustration that in due course he'll come begging to buy the full package, then why should the cartel not welcome the opportunity to teach the tight vendor a lesson?

It's kind of the definition of a cartel that they seek to discriminate against non-members ...

I think that question may well contain its own answer :)

Derek.