ARTICLES!
QUICK PROPERTY BUYERS?
- What Is The Best Way To Sell My Property?
- How to sell your house quickly?
- How can I tell if a cash buyer is trustworthy?
- What will a property buyer offer for my home?
- Different ways of selling your home quickly
- Houses bought for cash: does this really happen?
- How much will it cost to sell my home?
- Quick house sales and where to get them
- Sell my house fast: here are a few options
- Will anyone buy my home?
ESTATE AGENTS?
- Recommended Estate Agents
- 10 things you must know about Estate Agents
- Shall I choose the cheapest Estate Agent?
- Do I need a Rightmove Estate Agent?
- Can I trust an Estate Agent's valuation of my property?
- Are there any good online Estate Agents?
- Choosing an asking price that draws in buyers
- Do I need an EPC to sell my property?
- Does my Estate Agent need to advertise my property for sale in the local newspapers?
- Do I need to use a local Estate Agent to sell my house?
- Finding the best Estate Agent
- How do I choose the best Estate agent to sell my home?
- Shall I sell my home privately or sell using an Estate Agent?
PROPERTY VALUATION?
- Free online house valuation
- How to add value to your home
- How to value your property
- How you can use house price data to accurately value your home
CONVEYANCING?
- What is property conveyancing?
- Property conveyancing process for a house seller
- Property conveyancing process for a house buyer
- What about DIY conveyancing?
- How do I go about choosing the best conveyancer?
- Property conveyancing glossary: A guide to the commonly used terms in conveyancing
HOUSE REPOSSESSION
- Repossession process explained
- Ways to stop a repossession
- Where you can get help if you're facing repossession
- Mortgage Rescue Scheme
Shall I Choose a Cheap Estate Agent?
Shall I Choose a Cheap Estate Agent?
There are two sayings in life that are true more often than not. The first is that ‘You get what you pay for’. So if you pay a cheap rate, then you get cheap goods. The second is that ‘You buy cheap, pay dear’. This saying means that when you buy something cheap, it will often fall apart and end up costing you more in the longer term. Well, both these sayings are true when it comes to Estate Agents. Don’t try to cut corners by going for a cheap Estate Agent; it will cost you dearly in the long term.
Cheap Estate Agents cannot offer you the same level of service that the more expensive Estate Agents do. If they were in a position to offer you the same level of service then they would have to charge more for their services. So what you get with a cheap Estate Agent is just that; a cheap service and a cheap estate agency.
“Aha” you may be thinking, “I will just go for an online estate agency. They will be cheap and so I will save myself a lot of money”. Well the reality is that many online estate agencies simply do not sell all that many properties. Buying a house is still a big, big deal, so people do not want to trust an online agency, they want to be able to go into an Estate Agent’s office and talk through any issues. They don’t want to simply be hanging around waiting for emails to arrive. Although we undoubtedly live in a digital age, there are still some things that we want to have a personal approach with. So people trust an Estate Agent that is ‘real’ rather than a virtual Estate Agent.
Even if online estate agencies do manage to sell properties many of these will fail to come to completion, simply due to the poor service that a ‘virtual’ agency provides. Buying a home (or selling a home) is a really stressful business and if there are any problems you will want them to be sorted out as soon as possible. Otherwise, the sale or completion will simply not go ahead and this is exactly what happens with online estate agencies; completions just don’t happen.
Perhaps the scariest thing to think about with regard to online Estate Agencies is that the Estate Agency market as a whole is unregulated, but there is no way of regulating exactly what is happening with regard to online estate agencies, so there are no definitive figures as to how many are RICS members, how many houses they have on their books and what the completion rates are like. It is almost like a lottery. But it is your house that is at stake; not a £1 lottery ticket!
So if you are insistent, then choose a cheap Estate Agent or online Estate Agent; but be realistic about what kind of service you will get and how successful your sale will be!