It is estimated that over 2% of the UK population now sell their property privately. This is an ever-increasing figure..
The main reason is that it is cheaper, a lot cheaper to sell property privately. If you pay an estate agent 1.5% commission , the seller will save £1,500 per £100,000 of the property value.
If you have a property valued at £250,000 that is a £3,750 saving. That can pay for your removal costs, solicitor fees and still have some left over for a holiday or new sofa.
So this brings us on to the reason people sell privately, it is a lot easier than it use to be. Firstly it is simple to market your property, you can use the Internet and there are many private sales companies. However how do you know which one to pick? Many are simply a one-man band operating from a front room.
To create a private property sales advert, you simply need:-
Estate Agents typically charge anywhere between 1 and 2.5% commission for their services. Therefore if you are selling a £200,000 home at 1.5% you will be paying £3,000 in Estate Agency fees. This seems like a lot of money for very little work. The alternative involves selling your property privately so the first question is do you think you could promote your property, advertise it and negotiate a better deal than the estate agent?
Ask yourself:-
What are the pros and cons of selling a property privately?
Pros
Cons
The office of fair trading recently gave new recommendations that if you have a sole contract with an estate agency and you sell privately via one of these internet private home sales companies then you must still honour the estate agent’s sole contract and pay them the commission. Read the OFT’s guidance to fair trading in estate agency here
The key is that you need people to see your property. Therefore you need a for sale board for the passing trade and you need your property adverts to be online and preferably on a major property portal e.g. fish4homes.
However you also need to be smarter and think how else people can find your property, why not take out a classified advert in the newspaper? Why not leaflet a few roads nearby, did you know 80% of all people move within in 6 miles of their current address? Or if you are really enterprising why not leaflet people on a Saturday afternoon in your local high street as they are looking in estate agent windows – there is no more relevant and effective marketing technique.
There are several good and well-established private sales companies and these are:-
The Little House Company. established and well run pioneer of private sale market.
Property Broker. Good coverage in London and South East, been established for a long time now.
Houseladder. really badly designed garish looking site, but have been around a while and seem to run the service well.
