Do people still gravitate towards estate agents for house purchases?

candor

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Hi all,

We are in the process of selling our house and we have advertised it ourselves on daft.ie. We have had some interest but certainly not to the extent I would have expected. It is priced at the market price. The house is located in a good development in a busy town close to Dublin.

Personally, I would rather deal with the owner directly when purchasing but perhaps I am in the minority. We would like to sell soon as we are hoping to make bids on other properties but I'd rather be sale agreed and preferably have contracts exchanged before making any bids. What route would you take in this situation?

Thanks.
 
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Personally, I would rather deal with the owner directly when purchasing but perhaps I am in the minority. We would like to sell soon as we are hoping to make bids on other properties but I'd rather be sale agreed and preferably have contracts exchanged before making any bids. What route would you take in this situation?

Thanks.

you are in the minority, the vast majority of houses in ireland go through agents, and if you are in a rush taking an alternative route isnt the wisest

also you cant make a bid on another house until you are sale agreed.
 
I would agree you are probably in the minority. Its not common enough these days for people not to ask questions as to why it is being done.

However, there are things you can do if you really want to push this through on your own
1. Advertise on all relevant sites (e.g. my home), not just one. Go for a premium advert
2. Clearly state it is a direct vendor sale (transparency) and clearly state all money (including booking deposit etc) will be paid to a solicitor (and state their names ideally)
3. I would personally get an engineers report done and include in the material - with a caveat obviously that it is FYI only. The aim is to demonstrate there is nothing wrong with the house
4. I would also consider getting a professional valuation done, to show the details around how the property has been priced. You can do it as part of a mortgage revaluation for 127 euro
5. Finally, make sure you get someone to do the photos for you professionally. This will put the property in much better light rather than those taken personally

Clearly state why you wish to sell (upgrade, downsize, moving location etc), and potentially do an open viewing to see if you can drum up interest. Do one at maybe 8pm some evening during the week and then on a Saturday afternoon - outside the times the usual estate agents do them (or align the times with others in the area)

If you wish to sell this yourself - you need to incur a cost associated with the sale and show this is something you are committed to.
 
Agree with all the above, I'm currently in the market and I'm really just basing my search on the open viewings listed on MyHome/ Daft.
 
Thanks folks for the information, much appreciated. We have a recent valuation that was required to adjust the mortgage rate, which appears to be a realistic price based on recent similar house sales in the area. I'll get some quotes off agents and go from there, thanks!
 
Hi all,

We are in the process of selling our house and we have advertised it ourselves on daft.ie. We have had some interest but certainly not to the extent I would have expected. It is priced at the market price. The house is located in a good development in a busy town close to Dublin.

Personally, I would rather deal with the owner directly when purchasing but perhaps I am in the minority. We would like to sell soon as we are hoping to make bids on other properties but I'd rather be sale agreed and preferably have contracts exchanged before making any bids. What route would you take in this situation?

Thanks.
I do wish you luck in selling but Estate Agents are there because most of them do know the market, they've got contacts, know who's looking in an area and know what people will pay. Sure you'll sell the house eventually, but you will never know what an agent might have got and how quickly they might get everything done. Against that, when you go looking for your new house, how do you think you'll go about buying? Will you call to householders or to Estate Agents or some other way? Do you start to see where this is going and why?
 
I do wish you luck in selling but Estate Agents are there because most of them do know the market, they've got contacts, know who's looking in an area and know what people will pay. Sure you'll sell the house eventually, but you will never know what an agent might have got and how quickly they might get everything done. Against that, when you go looking for your new house, how do you think you'll go about buying? Will you call to householders or to Estate Agents or some other way? Do you start to see where this is going and why?

With regards to searching for properties, I look at daft.ie, property.ie (which is a sister site to daft.ie), local papers/publications online, search on google etc. myhome.ie feels a little clunkier so tend to avoid that. If I know any properties locally that are going to be sold in the near future, I've no problem chatting with the owners and dealing directly.
For me, it's the about the property I'm looking at, not who is selling it. I like the fact of getting the property information directly from the vendor as you tend to get a little more detail and it's quicker to get a response normally. If the property meets the criteria, then great, if not go to the next one. The bulk of the transaction is done through solicitors anyway so I have no problem in giving a booking deposit to the vendors solicitor also.
 
I sold my house on Daft.ie in 5 days in 2010, when the property market was less than effervescent.

I took 12 really nice photos and showed the house to a number of interested parties and showcased it appropriately by highlighting improvements made etc. The 3rd viewer bought it and all went well thankfully.

I was determined not to use an Estate Agent due to having seen countless lazy adverts with poor pictures, insufficient care given to detail and an overall unprofessional disinterest in whether the property sold or not. Up to and including my own experiences viewing houses where some unfriendly and unprofessional fella pointed vaguely into a room with a dishwasher, sink and table and muttered "ahm....kitchen......"

A friend of mine refused to do the same as he was massively preoccupied with not having a "For Sale" sign in the front garden - There was no talking him out of it. (????) ...... It was the most expensive sign he ever leased.

How the Estate Agent hasn't become extinct is beyond me.
 
So what does the estate agent do thats of real value and that cannot be done by oneself??
 
So what does the estate agent do thats of real value and that cannot be done by oneself??

Nada. They're a parasitic presence in the property market sphere along with the Solicitors and professional Basil Fawlty-esque "wall-tappers" that posture and fawn as they do the valuation and BER assessment.......

I once had a fella in to value the house..... He asked me twice had any houses on the road sold recently...... Then he left after an hour of pretending to be busy so he could justify his fee. Fast forward a few months until it transpired he'd lost his report and had to come back. 2nd visit (that he wasn't going to be paid for) took 2-3 minutes as he walked the corridor glancing into rooms and then left like the place was on fire.
 
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Nada. They're leeches in polyester suits...
I'm not disagreeing but surely they do provide a phone answering and viewing service which takes up peoples time. They also would possibly be able to weed out timewasters. Whether that service is worth the money is another thing.
 
So what does the estate agent do thats of real value and that cannot be done by oneself??

Nothing but Irish society is deeply conformist, any departure from the norm illicits feelings of distrust

Which is kind of funny as most estate agents are anything but straight shooters.
 
"parasitic presence in the property market sphere along with the Solicitors "

And you did your own conveyancing?

mf

No, I did however pay a flat fee to a firm which was doing this work at a fraction of very, very substantial cost that has been traditionally charged for this.

At the time this practice was relatively new, I know for a fact it upset the cozy ranks of the Solicitors in the area and I presume the cut-price practitioners still made a handsome profit even at this much reduced rate.
 
When selling our last house we went with an estate agent. We did quite a lot of background research first, eg, their ads on daft and in local media, word of mouth locally. This shortlisted them and I then interviewed. I was very happy with the result. It saved us lots of time on viewings and dealings - especially dealing with messers and undecideds and those "bidders" lacking finances (all of these showed up). I am absolutely convinced that we did better on price than we would have achieved on our own (or with a dodgy agent).

When buying I avoided all vendor sales. Irrational I am sure, but I assumed that with a fair percentage there would be issues - and I did not have any clarity on how matters such as deposit would work. Also, I did not want to deal with owners with an emotional investment in their property (which most of us have). As an aside I found all viewings where the owners "happened" to be there to be unsatisfactory.

We met a wide variety of agents in our viewings - some I was impressed with, some not. As it happens, the house we bought was through an agent who I thought unimpressive (from a vendor's point of view) but we got the house we wanted.

Agents vary. You need to do your homework. It is like engaging anyone else. We would certainly engage one if selling again - but thankfully no plans on this! Of course, some personal vendors may be more comfortable with doing it themselves (and more capable of doing it "professsionally") but I doubt that this is universal.
 
"I presume the cut-price practitioners still made a handsome profit even at this much reduced rate. "

I doubt that very much- they did it cheaply because they were trying to get business, any business, in through the door.

I haven't seen the "sure a monkey could do a conveyance for 10 pence" comments for a long time but I know , from personal experience, the amount of work that goes in to even the simplest transaction.

Oh well, there y'are - must go now -on this beautiful evening, I'll feed the ponies before I take the yacht out for a spin- all on the back of my parasitic presence in the property market sphere .

mf
 
No, I did however pay a flat fee to a firm which was doing this work at a fraction of very, very substantial cost that has been traditionally charged for this.

At the time this practice was relatively new, I know for a fact it upset the cozy ranks of the Solicitors in the area and I presume the cut-price practitioners still made a handsome profit even at this much reduced rate.
How much?
 
Buying a house is a big deal, anything out of the ordinary would make me a little weary.
There is no way I’d buy or sell a house without an estate agent. Like another poster I can’t stand to meet owners. It hinders the viewing process.

Mangojoe how much was your conveyance?
 
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