We saved for nearly 7 years to afford our forever home we live in now so every penny was carefully accounted for. We missed out on nights out, holidays and luxuries so we could move from a small 2 terrace house with no garden to a spacious 4-bed property on a huge plot of land. We now live in our dream home and thanks to the interior design efforts of Charley we even have original works of art all over the walls. It feels good to know that me & Lee can give our children the opportunity to grow up in a nice area, with nice neighbours and plenty of space to play and grow up in.
One of the biggest expenses when moving is actually selling your property in the first place. We contacted most of the high street estate agents to get valuations done and discuss their selling fees. It was quite shocking to find out that some of them wanted upwards of £2500 for advertising our property and ‘hopefully’ selling it. This was crazy money as far as I was concerned so I started researching online estate agents and soon found most had selling fee’s around the £500 mark. I then spent a few days looking at the houses listed on online estate agents and was pleasantly surprised to see most had only been listed in the last 6 weeks. As a lot of the online estate agent have similar fee packages I used HomeOwners Alliance to compare and find the best agent for us. When I had chosen the company and package to suit our needs I found the whole process really easy and straightforward. We decided to do our own photography of the house and found that we were able to capture many better quality photos than you would see in an estate agents window. We then uploaded them along with a brief description and the online agent sent a representative out to take all the measurements and put a for sale sign up. Within 12 hours our house was for sale online and viewable on 10 different market sites.Within 24 hours we had 2 viewings and within 2 weeks were had sold our house. The whole process was so easy and stress-free. As the fee was a one-off upfront amount, we didn’t have to worry about trying to find thousands of pounds after the sale had completed and we could just get on with packing and start getting ready to move to our new home. I would 100% recommend using an online estate agent for your next move, whether that’s the sale of your house or you are looking to move into rented accommodation. The whole service is much slicker and thanks to the internet on the go you can keep up to date with the progress of your sale by checking your account, instead of 3,00000 phone calls to a high street estate agent.
I asked some of my colleagues if they had used an estate agent and here’s what they said.
The main benefit is the price. They usually have a set fee, far below that of a traditional agent. And the more your house is worth, the more you save. – Pete
Ours was so easy, think we went with EMoov. Could delay payment for a year too. Had our house sold within a couple of months too. – Adam
You know they will put getting your house on the web as the priority. Everyone is on the web nowadays and high street estate agents have too many other things to focus on – Jen
We used EMoov. The photos were amazing and it cost £550!! High st Estate agents were charging £4000. Easy to arrange viewings too.. – Lynn
The price, definitely! We’d have saved around £1500 if we’d have sold ours through an online agent 4 years ago, but back then we didn’t really know about them. Victoria
I hope this information has been useful to you and it saves you from overpaying in selling fees. Take a look at the Home Owners Alliance website I mention above to compare the best package for you and your home.