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Online estate agent experiences and recommendations?

mattski

mattski

pfm Member
Hi,

We're thinking of moving and I wondered if somewhere like purplebricks, tepilo or easyproperty would be worth a try.

They all claim to provide pretty much the same service backed with a bunch of reviews. But Trustpilot has the usual stack of terrible experiences.

What are your thoughts on this and who would you recommend ?

Thanks
Matt
 
I suspect it comes down to the small print. You need in writing that the headline fee is what you end up paying. Also just what service will they provide? A lot of online conveyancing firms suck people in with a low advertised price and end up charging more than your local solicitor will charge.
 
Speaking as someone who had one of the online estate agents involved in their chain, I'd perhaps be wary of them. They were difficult to get hold of, and seemingly made no effort to push the process on. I guess this was because, unlike high street estate agents, they get their money whether the sale happens or not (rather like solicitors - but best not get me started on the bunch of those involved in our chain...).
 
It's the coming thing.
How it currently works could well be hit and miss though as the wrinkles come out
Think is was Which that had a report recently...Some ask for dough up front, cheap, some after the sale about double.
Considering the very high regard we all have for estate agents and what they charge it looks worth a punt to me
Could be worth joining Which just for this
 
Why shouldn't the solicitor charge for the work they have done? many don't. Would you expect a plumber to accept you cancelling a job half done without receiving payment for the work completed?
 
I've no problem with solicitors getting paid for work they've done; but in our case it was us who were having to do all of the chasing up to move the process forward. As an example, three months into the moving process (which we were originally told would be when we would be completing), none of the solicitors in the chain knew how many people were in that chain (we'd found out - why couldn't they?)), and thus weren't communicating with all the people they needed to. There are plenty of other examples I could give; but having just calmed down after the stress of it, I'd rather not think about it much more.
Anycase, to the OP, hope your move goes more smoothly than ours did.
 
The solicitors job is to check title not to chase up chains. That is what the estate agents are paid for an in most cases several times more than the legal bill.
 
if i had a property that would sell in a trice i would use them but most recently i bought a property with problems . the high street estate agent was brilliant and worked very hard to overcome all the many problems we encountered . i am not sure if online guys would provide that level of service

which magazine recently had an article on them , if i find it i will post their findings
 
Rodrat said:
The solicitors job is to check title not to chase up chains. That is what the estate agents are paid for an in most cases several times more than the legal bill.
Click to expand...

And in our case they didn't do that in a timely manner, leading to a delay of around four months in the process, as there were title issues at the top of the chain that weren't discovered until months into the process.
 
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