Selling House Privately

[fredmila]

Has anybody managed to sell a property privately recently? In particular using those websites that claim all kinds of successes. I tried with a property some 5 years ago and the business was in its infancy. It was of no use. I ended up selling the property with the 3rd Estate Agent I hired.

I would try to sell a house privately, as well as using an agent, in order to increase the chances of success. I just do not want to waste my money on the site that calls itself the leading UK private sales site: www-thelittlehousecompany-co-uk

Ta

[geoffk]

I THINK HOUSELADDER.com are one of the more popular ones...find out if they are on rightmove as 90% of buyers go there first..

[fresh]

Has anybody managed to sell a property privately recently? In particular using those websites that claim all kinds of successes. I tried with a property some 5 years ago and the business was in its infancy. It was of no use. I ended up selling the property with the 3rd Estate Agent I hired.

I would try to sell a house privately, as well as using an agent, in order to increase the chances of success. I just do not want to waste my money on the site that calls itself the leading UK private sales site: www-thelittlehousecompany-co-uk

Ta

You might want to look at www.eviewing.co.uk , they charge £96 and you don't need to fork out on a HIP. Very interesting.

[Spark]

I have been advertising my house privately since August and haven't had that much luck. I had "sold" it last Summer when the buyer then changed their mind and pulled out in August (after stringing me along for 2 months!)

I put my house on www.121move.co.uk as they were the cheapest way to have it advertised on Rightmove/Primelocation etc. You pay £295+VAT up-front for them to take photos/make a floorplan and then advertise on Rightmove etc. They have found 6 people who came to view and 1 couple made an offer that we accepted back in October. Our chain collapsed when their seller pulled out of buying their house...

I've also listed the house on around 10 free sites:

www.tepilo.com - generated 1 viewer

www.gumtree.com - generated around 10 responses to the ad. 5 were from other online EA's wanting us to register with them. 1 person contacted me asking if I would rent my house to them. I had 2 people from a BMV property club saying one of their investors may want to buy our house. 2 genuine enquiries but the people either didn't book a viewing or made an appointment to view and then didn't turn up!

www.myownmove.com - no enquiries

www.houseladder.co.uk - no enquiries

www.notestateagents.com - no enquiries

www.noestateagentslease.co.uk - no enquiries

I also set-up my own website to advertise the house, with all the free sites pointing to this website (website has had 700+ hits). I made my own for sale sign and have magnetic stickers on my cars advertising the house. I placed postcards in various local shops, but these didn't generate any viewings. I took out an ad in the local paper (in October) and this didn't get any viewings.

There are several problems with advertising privately:

• It takes a lot of time to list the house on the free sites and they don't seem to be used by many people
• People tend to ring up and expect to see the house immediately (or at least that day). I expected most viewing to be at the weekend, but most people actually request to see it during the week! We are selling a bungalow so most of the viewers are retired
• Viewing requests tend to dribble in - normally 1 every 14 days or so. If you are with a proper EA they normally get 5 or 6 people viewing the place in the first week.

We are now seriously thinking about getting some local EAs out to value our place and put it with one if we don't sell in the next couple of weeks. I think the problem we might be having is our target buyer (retired people) may not be seeing our place online. My parents are retired and they bought their bungalow last year from an EA. They don't use the Internet and I'm sure there are loads of retired people who only look at houses via "real" EAs rather than searching online. That is the major advantage of the EA - they have a list of people on their books coming to them asking for a particular type of property.