Owning your own home

From both recently buying, and selling, I say they over value your property to get your business, and then take a long long long long long time to sell it, if at all. Check out how long purple bricks properties have been on in the market in your area on zoopla etc.

I had really wanted to use an online estate agent, as they should be able to rival a 'real' EA. However, as they take 100% of their fee to list the property, and they don't get anything else if they sell there's no incentive for them to actually bother selling the place.

We had them over and the agent we had was good, obviously had a lot of local knowledge and valued it at the same as most of the other agents. We’re going with a local agent for 8 weeks who’s confident of getting a higher price but will consider Purple Bricks after that.
On the flip side we went to see a house on with them and the agent was pretty rubbish - didn’t have the answer to some simple questions and gave the distinct impression she’d rather not be there. So it clearly depends who’s in your area.
The transparency for both sides is an excellent - we get alerted when a viewing or an offer is made on the house we viewed so not reliant on an agent to keep you in the loop.