Good news! You do not have to buy your home through and estate agent. Often it leads to hold ups and extra costs on top of what you are already paying out for the house and solicitors fees. Yes, there are some serious alternatives. According to the Office of Fair Trading, 1 in 10 people are cutting out estate agents and selling their home privately – potentially knocking thousands of pounds off the cost of selling.
Doing it yourself
Online services give homeowners the chance to advertise to millions of potential buyers – such as yourself – which previously they wouldn’t have been able to reach, as they had to rely on more traditional methods of advertising. But as a buyer, you have a range of tools to help you find the perfect property.
- Look at ads in national and local newspapers.
- Look in sales websites like Loot, Gumtree – even eBay.
- Look at the various property websites that have set up in the last few years, such as First4sale, Housenetwork, Houseladder, Homesonsale, Homepages and Houseweb.
- Many other property websites are directly linked to estate agents so they don’t give you much of an advantage except that you can do some searching from the comfort of your own computer. Sites that do this include Find-a-Property, Hot Property and Property Today.
- Ask. Simply talking to people in the area can often uncover news of someone locally who is selling their property.
- Leaflet. Again, if you know the area – and particularly the road – that you want to buy in, putting a note through the doors in the vicinity could create some interest, particularly if you they know you are a private buyer and not just another agency.
Thanks to the internet, there are now lots of ways you can find out about the area and get a clear idea of house prices without having to take an estate agent’s word for it. Even if you do end up using an agent, it’s definitely worth mugging up on local facts first.
- Check out Hometrack for the most up-to-date independent survey of UK house prices and market trends.
- Look at sites like Up my Street, Homecheck and Neighbourhood Statistics for information on local schools, crime levels, ecological data etc.
- If you don’t have time to visit all the areas where you’re thinking of buying, why not have a look at the house and the surrounding streets through Google Street View. This allows you to take a ‘virtual walk’ through many of the UK’s cities and will give you a good idea of what the area is like. It could save you a lot of time and effort when house hunting.
- Find out how much properties have really sold for in the area you want to buy on sites such as Net Houseprices, Our Property, My House Price, Houseprices and Mouseprice.
Also, consider renting for a while in the place that you would like to move to. Actually living there will give you a much better idea of whether it’s right for you than just visiting for viewings every now and then.
Incredibly, estate agents are not licensed in this country, unlike the rest of Europe, the US and Canada. This is probably why they have such a bad reputation here! The Ombudsman for Estate Agents (OEA) keeps calling for agents to be licensed, but so far all that’s happened is that more agents have joined its voluntary scheme. This is not as good as a license – but it does at least mean that if you use a member estate agent and you have a complaint, you can take it to the Ombudsman and potentially get compensation of up to £25,000.
So, if you decide to use an estate agent to find you a property
- Make sure they are a member of the OEA scheme.
- Have a look at tips and advice given by the Office of Fair Trading and the National Association of Estate Agents. Both have downloadable sheets of advice on various aspects of buying and selling through an estate agent.
Other than that, basic principles of nagging a lot, ringing them or visiting them every day (really) to see what has just come in and simply making them your bestest friends in the whole wide world are likely to get the most out of them.
Once you have found a place that you like, then you have the joy of offering and buying – and at this stage, you should talk to an independent mortgage broker like London & Country who can look at the whole of the market for you (not just a few companies that they are tied to) and get you a great deal. For loads of information on mortgages, download our comprehensive mortgage guide for free.
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I read the title as how to SELL your house without an Estate Agent but it seems to give advice on how to buy one!