Owning your own home

So it's taken the best part of three months and the guy has pulled out three times but I finally have a date and we are going to exchange contracts on the 8th of this month. This is shit-your-pants scary and awesome all at the same time.

After 20 years of renting in London I'm finally going to live in a place that no landlord can just turf me out of with a month's notice. I can't even imagine what that's going to feel like.

amazing, congratulations! Why scary? Its all fun :)

Transferring that £13k to the lawyers did give me a bit of a moment of fear - all my instincts tell me to spend that money on motorcycles and tattoos - but yeah, I think from here on out it's fun fun fun.

Being able to paint a room whatever colour I like! What wild and unexpected luxury!

That's amazing news. On the non-renting feeling of security, it's amazing. Buying furniture to fit a room rather than with an eye to whether it would be practical if you had to move in three months is great too.

Tossbag.

This. Though as I discovered today it's best you measure before you buy. I had to build a tower outside after the sofa bed I assumed would be flatpack came basically assembled in a long mushroom shape that wouldn't fit through any doors. Open the large window upstairs and using a pulley/two stepladders lots of effort and very little brain I managed to slide the fucker through. When we sell the new owner is keeping it.

When we sell the new owner is keeping it.

Lol. My sister bought a house with a huge L-Shaped sofa in it that she didn't want. The seller tried all sorts of tricks to get her to accept it as part of the sale.

She put her foot down and refused point blank. The seller had to remove the entire front window of the living room and reinstate it to get the sofa out and scrap it.

Why not just saw the fucker up in-situ?

Originally they thought they could sell it apparently. It was £3k when they bought it according to them.

It was a motorised Lay-Z-Boy sort of thing.

This.

Daft cunts.

Purple bricks. Hatched. Easy Property. House Simple.

What are people's experiences using these, from both a selling and buying perspective?

We had a dabble viewing properties to buy through Purple Bricks. The thing is, our experience will vary hugely to others because its pot luck who you deal with.

We viewed a house in SE1 and the two "estate agents" who turned up for first and second viewing openly discussed the fact that they were an accountant and a recording engineer respectively. Neither of them had a clue about the property beyond what they had read on the advert on the web site. Both said that they only had a few weeks experience of showing people round properties. They were doing it as a 2nd and 3rd job to pay the bills.

I don't really have a problem with part time estate agents. They only needed to show us round and ultimately could contact the sellers to ask further questions. I worry what would have happened if those guys had gone on to be involved in a tricky sale.

That said, you might end up dealing with somebody with loads and experience. I reckon its pot luck.

It actually didn't make much of a difference to us in this situation

We sold our house with Purplebricks, albeit not in London.

Our thoughts:

We spoke to both PurpleBricks and two standard high street agents, PBs valuation sat exactly in between the two high street valuations.

I loved the online dashboard that they supplied which meant you could see how many views on each platform your ad has, as well as things like managing price and the description yourself (once the agent had written the ad)

I found managing viewings myself really straightforward, and meant less delays in to and fro. Also having direct contact with buyers helped move things along, as they were relatively nervous first time buyers, they were able to directly ask me questions, and I was able to nudge them as needed

We sold within 2 weeks of the property going on the market, for very nearly the asking price, and more than we expected.

The local agent where we were was a proper estate agent, with 10 years plus experience, which we were able to pretty much verify.

Our final thoughts were that we would use them again with 2 provisos;

1. The house we were selling was relatively straightforward and not at the top end of the market for the size and location
   
2. The local agent knows his arse from his elbow, should be straight forward to work out...
   
   

but that's just our experience

I found it hard to work out what value the estate agent offered to either me or the vendor when I was buying my place. All I could see was that they advertised the property, let me in for the viewing and again for the survey/mortgage valuation, relayed my offer to the vendor and then gave me the keys when it was done. Everything else was handled by the respective solicitors and myself. I would be loathe to have to give away a 4 figures of the sale price to one when it comes time to sell.

These are my thoughts exactly; but I wanted to check I wasn't missing something.

I'm selling a flat in North London. Whilst I assume the market isn't as mental as when I bought in 2014, I can't see how the agent would get more people to view my flat (everyone just using zoopla/rightmove, right?), or help the process.

Things may be different Out of London.

Unless the Agent is an old hand as has some secret blend of herbs and spices to be able to justify and actually sell a decent sale price on behalf of the vendor, then they come under the chocolate fire guard area of usefulness in my book. Without exception during my viewings and musing about buying a flat, they were all vacant, useless twats with about as much knowledge about the conveyancing process or even the local housing market as the more daft one of my two cats.

But as you say, this was in London. The only other experience I have is rural NI, which was also shit.

Personally, I would not be happy with a 'resting' actor or suchlike trying to sell the most valuable thing I own for the best possible price. Some of what you're paying for when you use a 'proper' estate agent is access to their list of waiting clients, some of whom may have just missed out on their dream property, similar to yours and in the same area, and who are poised to buy and now prepared to pay over the odds for the right place.

We did not begrudge the firm we used in London their £6K commission as they'd netted us 10x that over the asking price. Would Purple Ronnie have done that? Yes, houses sell themselves to an extent - particularly in London's rabid London - but we were supporting a reputable, independent agent with a shop front in our local area, and were happy to do so.

There are exceptions, I've dealt with some excellent estate agents, as well as some truly abysmal ones.

I think it matters more when you are selling, and the good ones will quickly become apparent as they'll have done some research, will have a list of potential buyers they'd expect to get in as soon as you go on the market and will also detail their marketing plan to ensure you get as many viewers through the door as possible.

One thing I've been told about the online ones (Purple Bricks etc) is that they demand exclusivity for long periods (16 weeks?)- so if they do a bad job it can screw you.

I agree though, majority of the work seems to be for the solicitor and the buyer/seller, paying £1000s to have people shown around your house seems a bit pointless these days.

paying £1000s to have people shown around your house seems a bit pointless these days.

Aye. But when the market is hot, this is what will happen. I'm glad Purple Bricks are around to offer an alternative.

If the market goes south, some downwards pressure will be applied to EAs commission and with a bit of luck force some of the poorer EAs to vanish.

Also worth pointing out that the EA works solely on behalf of the seller, too :)

I am of course putting people I have not met or worked with into the same bucket as people who seemed to be used to opening a door and pocketing commission, so were not incentivised to do anything beyond that.

It was my first time buying somewhere and was routinely shown properties WAY outside of my budget and miles from the ones I had told them I wanted to see. One guy was really trying to push a place with a 104 year lease saying it was so long that it may as well be a Freehold. Not one of them could tell me the council tax band of whatever place we were viewing. Some didn't know whether or not there was a chain. The list goes on.

Again, I'd be happy for it to be proven that there are exceptions to my rule but, going on those personal experiences, the moronic many have likely scuppered it for the fantastic few.

Not one of them could tell me the council tax band of whatever place we were viewing. Some didn't know whether or not there was a chain.

.

And did we tell you the name of the game, boy? It's called riding the gravy train....

#parklife

When I was looking to buy I went round about 10 estate agents with details of what I was looking for, budget, etc Entire waste of time, not a single one bothered contacting me, it was always me contacting them about properties I'd seen online.

One did start to contact me after I'd seen a few properties with them but it wasn't anything that wasn't on their website.

The estate agents generally knew less than I did about the area and could answer pretty much none of the technical questions (and, to be honest, I would have double checked any answers they gave me anyway).

They added little to the process other than unlocking property doors.