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... Around 2 million houses and flats are bought and sold each year in the UK. Assuming an average Estate Agent fee of £1,500 that's £3billion per year! Then there's Letting Agent fees, Agents for business, commercial and agriculture. It all adds up to a massive amount of money that, in my opinion, would be much better spent on the properties themselves and reducing personal mortgages.
As an example, not that long ago my partner and myself sold our house and the estate agents bill was just short of £2,000. With typical commission rates of around 1% (and climbing up to 3.5% for multiple agency agreements) to sell a house valued at £200,000 it's going to cost a minimum of £2,000 plus an extra few hundred pounds for producing the glossy schedule. Furthermore, with the rise in house prices at the top end of the market it's not uncommon to hear of estate agent fees of £20,000+ for selling properties of the order of £1million.
These sort of costs to sell a house are simply unacceptable, particularly in today's technology driven world. Selling a house is inherently a costly business when one considers expenses such as legal and removal costs, and even more so if you are buying an alternative property. Eliminating estate agent fees from the process of selling a property vastly reduces the cost of moving to another property.
You wouldn't mind so much if estate agents provided a service that you was unable to carry out yourself. The solicitor's bill for selling our house was a fixed fee of £750, which equates to approximately one-third of the estate agent bill! Like me, you might also disagree with the cost of the solicitor's bill but at least they offer specialised domain knowledge, have undergone years of study and training at law school and are generally highly skilled individuals.
Let's take a look at what a typical estate agent does and see if you could do it yourself:
The majority of people selling a property know exactly what they want and what is both a realistic and achievable price. If you are not so sure then browsing through property magazines and studying properties for sale in your area will reveal the norm. Estate agents offer guidance as to an appropriate price. Several people even get quotes from more than one estate agent and weigh up the differing offers; sometimes the large discrepancy between different estate agents just goes to illustrate how wrong they can be! If you don't agree with any valuation then you'll select a price that you are happy with. At the end of the day, it's your property and you know what you want to sell it for.
If you are unsure of a price to ask for your property then help is at hand with
4fg's price search facility, which
performs a search of properties for sale and rent in your area. Price search can
be accessed from the main menu bar Tools|Property Price Search or by the
following quick links:
| property price search | |
|---|---|
| houses | |
| flats and apartments | |
| plots of land | |
| businesses | |
| commercial property | |
| properties abroad | |
| agricultural | |
| holiday properties | |
I don't know about you but schedules bore me to death. Most potential buyers are interested in:
As to detailing the colour of the walls, number of electrical sockets, and so on - these are details that just aren't that important when searching for your ideal property.
A lot of people today either have a camera on their mobile phone, a digital camera or could borrow one from a friend or scan photographs into digital format. All of the above information can easily be entered in 5 to 10 minutes! Once entered your schedule is generated automatically in PDF format using our schedule generator. Adobe Acrobat PDF documents are a popular format for the web since Adobe provide the Acrobat PDF reader for free.
Most estate agents now also display their clients properties on the company website or websites such as rightmove or PropertyFinder. Great, but it all adds to the cost and you've got to ask yourself that with an estimated 60% of buyers now searching the Web for their next property then why not bypass the estate agents altogether?
People have mixed feelings about the dreaded "For Sale" sign in the front garden. Some say that it's an essential part of selling a property, while others say it's a damn nuisance. There's the trivial objections of the signs being an eye sore and for ever blowing over in the wind but there are some more serious issues. It's now well known that some estate agents place them at the end of street corners to gain market presence, even if they've no clients in that area!
For various reasons, not all property sellers like the "For Sale" sign in their front garden. They might not want neighbours to know that their property is for sale. If a property is unoccupied a "For Sale" sign might encourage break-ins and vandalism. And, it's not always practical when selling a 2nd floor flat, a plot of land or a property abroad.
At 4fg we recognise that many sellers will still like to have some sort of "For Sale" or "For Rent" sign to help potential buyers spot their property from the kerb. Thus, we have provided several posters that you can print out and display in your living room window, sign in the front garden, on your business premises, etc. A poster generator is also provided to tailor a for-sale/rent poster to your particular needs.
Even if you market your property through an estate agent, you will probably be involved in viewings yourself. The usual protocol is to receive a phone call from the estate agent that a potential buyer would like to pop round for a viewing, with a day/time arranged for the viewing.
If you are uncomfortable or not able to carry out the viewing yourself then an estate agent may provide (for an additional fee) a viewing service. One problem can be that estate agents will only conduct viewings during office hours Monday-Friday. This can be a problem for many working buyers who may find this difficult and prefer to view properties during the evening and weekend.
Using an estate agent to conduct viewings can provide a degree of security since it eliminates you from revealing your identity to the potential buyer. If you would like to conduct a viewing yourself and live by yourself and feel anxious about being alone during the viewing then ask a friend or work colleague if they would "chum you" during a viewing - most friends would say "no problem". Furthermore, many buyers actually like to meet the seller - they don't intend making friendships, it's just human nature to be curious about the owners of the property that they're going to fork out a small fortune.
For further information about preparing your property for viewings check out viewings.
When you analyse what estate agents actually do, a big part of their job is being piggy in the middle:
What a palava!
The higher the property sale price the more the commission for estate agents. Thus, a key driving force for estate agents is to get as much as possible for a property. It could be argued that they are only working as hard as possible for their clients. However, there are numerous cases of the less reputable estate agents artificially inflating the price of a property just to maximise their commission, and as a consequence jeopardising the sale of the property. Alternatively, estate agents can be guilty of persuading sellers to lower the price to try and shift the property and get if off their books.
All of this communication can be done either through your solicitor or by corresponding directly with a buyer/seller. 4fg's Account Details is configured in such a way that only need to disclose the contact details that you want to disclose. Thus, if you don't want to disclose your landline or mobile phone then don't specify them and can instead rely on email correspondence or VOIP services such as Skype.
As you can see, it's not rocket science! So why not do it yourself and save £1,000s?
read even more... about Letting Agents?