Owning your own home

On the flip side we used Purple bricks and had zero issues at all, our agent was great, really responsive, full of support. I really liked the fact there was an online dashboard for viewings etc.

I think the thing with purple bricks is that in reality you are dealing with a one man band estate agent in effect, so it all comes down to how good that one person is, so guess there is no harm in having them out and seeing if they seem decent.

Aaah, so is Purple Bricks the Uber of estate agents?

Well it certainly was a couple of years ago. Our agent had 20 years of verifiable local knowledge, I would guess this is not the case in all places, but is certainly one of the things I would ask.

I also think it depends on the property type, ours was a very boring normal family home, sold after first viewing at exactly asking price. Anything funky I wouldn't consider them at all.

A sack of shit by most accounts. I almost went with them.

I was told by my agent not to accept the offer from someone selling through purple bricks also. Turns out it wasn't the best option for me to accept anyway but there you go.

Was it in London, if so what area?

It wasn't London based sadly.

I also had a pretty good experiecne with PB in Tooting. I think it 100% depends on your agent.

We had a buyer fall through and he was very good at holding it together on both ends. At that stage we also commissioned Marsh and Parsons to help sell quickly so we didnt lose our house and our PB agent was head and shoulders above Marsh and Marsons, and 10k cheaper

Y u no Nested?

We're talking to them as well, just want to get some other valuations and weigh options.

I used PB to sell - thought the estate agent side were great. Must depend on who your local expert is but ours was very communicative, did everything over whatsapp, no complaints whatsoever. In Reading though.

Made the mistake of using their solicitors though; worst I've ever experienced. Completely useless farmed out to some solicitors miles away, web-tool thing didn't work properly, took an age to do anything.

Didn't use them to sell but as a buyer I found they were pretty crap. Online viewing booking didn't work properly, trying to sort a booking meant being passed around multiple different people on the phone, viewings got cancelled at the last minute with no explanation, loads of stuff had to be done via their inflexible web portal, etc

The local estate agent for my area claimed to be pretty experienced but there was none of the pro-active kind of work to get me to view places.

If you're not using their viewing service I can't see what they offered beyond doing it yourself.

Nested have been grand, except for one incident yesterday/today. We had contacted a surveyor for our purchase and had expected them to contact the vendor to book in the survey.

Got an email from the progressor at Nested saying our buyer had requested a survey of our place. No problem. Bit of back and forth to get a date/time. Turns out it was actually our surveyor trying to arrange the survey of the place we are buying. Not a massive deal, and easily sorted. But, there are only two properties in this chain, should be easy to keep track of who's buying what, especially when the address of the property to be surveyed is in the email request from the surveyor. Annoying rather than concerning.

Very similar to our confusion too, our mortgage surveyor had been given my EA at Nesteds information to book out survey, not the EA details of the place we're buying, instead of noticing this and saying 'we don't manage that property' even they just ignored the messages. Minorly annoying.

Yeah, I was wondering why the surveyor contacted my agent. But then I remembered that when instructing the surveyor, there was a "Your Estate Agent" field in the form. I thought it was weird, but put Nested as that was the correct answer. So I suppose some of the blame lies with the surveyor as I gave them the vendor's email too. But still.

Once you sign up to purple bricks, ask yourself what their incentive is to sell your property, you are paying them a flat fee either way.

Im just about to list my flat in SE London, had them and three other agents round, there is the advantage that you might save a couple grand, but really do you want to scrimp on something so important. The person who came round to ours did not inspire confidence at all.

Secondly, we viewed a house last week and the agent told me if he had two identical offers on the table and one was selling through PB he would recommend the other, as he has seen too many chains collapse due to PB.

This was my views/ impression too.

I don’t think there’s anything structurally wrong with the way PB, Yopa etc do business. The flat fee model is fine - the incentive they have is to do their job to sell your home. The agents have sales incentives on the business side that are invisible to punters so to claim they are not incentivised is a bit...nonsense.

But like all EAs if the actual agent is shit it’s going to be a struggle and the technology can’t paper over the cracks.

I’d consider using them if I was selling another flat < £600k. They tend to price realistically or slightly under when I got them to quote for our place/s.

We used Yopa to sell, was great - The local agent was really helpful and much more communicative than the agent in the bricks&mortar agency we had previously tried to sell our place with.
I think it depends on the agent for your area - The guy we had managed to build much better rapport with potential viewers (from what we saw), compared to the awkward suits in their early-20's who the EA were insistent on using. He had a fantastic beard too.

How much did it cost you in the end? I saw something about them charing £300 if you want them to deal with viewings.

We've just sold through PB and they were really good. As others have said, I guess it depends on your agent.

Secondly, we viewed a house last week and the agent told me if he had two identical offers on the table and one was selling through PB he would recommend the other, as he has seen too many chains collapse due to PB

That feels like an attempt by the established players to circle the wagons!

This was a tiny independent - not a chain so I don't think so.

My friends put their place on the market with PB a year or two ago. They still own it.

Sod dealing with Estate Agents. Doing a quick calculation their fee divided by the amount of hours they'll actually work for you should be enough to sack them off.

Purple bricks get you up on the websites you need to be on and give you control over photos, description etc. Show people around yourself too.

Should be enough unless what your selling is a disaster/you have no social skills.

Should be enough unless what your selling is a disaster/you have no social skills

The agents that sold my place did something like 40 viewings over 6 months (buyer pulled out during lockdown) - I think that would have got a bit tiresome to arrange myself.