Photo Lizzie Orme
If you’re thinking about selling your home the first thing you tend to do is to call a few local estate agents to get a valuation and then appoint one of them to go to market to sell it. But, with the rise and ease of selling products online the UK government changed the rules in 2013 to allow more homes to be sold over the internet. Initially this sounds like a great money-saving idea, as the costs of advertising your home on a private sale website can be as little as £300-£600, whereas the percentage commission you pay to an estate agent can be between 1% and 3% of the property value. Say your home is worth £200,000 and you have agreed a 2% fee with your agent, then you’ll be paying them £4,000+VAT. So at first glance a private sale website seems like a no brainer. But, like everything else in life, if something is really cheap there is a good reason for it.
If you sign up to a private sale site you’ve got to do a huge amount of the legwork. They’ll send you a ‘For Sale’ sign with your personal number on it. You are responsible for taking all of the marketing photographs, booking all of the viewings, showing everyone around your home, organising your Energy Performance Certificate and you have to do the most important part of the entire sale, negotiating the price with the buyer.