Found a property I wanted to view, wrote an email to send to the estate agent....and found that there isn't one - the house is being offered by Housesimple.
I've done some initial reading up, and I'm feeling very wary - I know from my own recent sale how much work the estate agent had to put in. I suppose a good conveyancing solicitor will be able to drag the sale through, but surely much will depend on the vendor, whether they are experienced or naive or whatever?
The online reviews are naturally mostly from vendors, and a lot of the online commentary I've found is from estate agents, who, equally naturally, are fairly scathing about Housesimple, so I was wondering what people's actual experiences of buying from companies like these have been.
Edit: phoned up to book a viewing, and found that it's sold, they hadn't got round to updating the advert, so this is just theoretical now....
Last edited by Der Amf; 22nd July 2019 at 13:58.
I had an experience buying from Purple Bricks and they were rubbish - which stacked things massively in my favour.
They lost all interest in doing other viewings after I made my initial offer, even though I'd have been prepared to offer more.
The vendor was very unhappy with the agent that was assigned to her.
I certainly wouldn't use them to sell though, a local agent will usually get you a better price.
Bricks and mortar estate agents (with solid local reputation) has always been my choice. I rather like the personal service.
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I have a sale going through at the moment. I am the 4th and final property in the chain. The first is a flat with purple bricks and useless would be a complement. You would think they are paid to make it fall through.
We are also looking to buy but after we've sold and as soon as we an online agent against a property we automatically discount the house as if the seller isn't clued up or serious.
Get a good deal with a decent local estate agent with a good name and don't pay over the odds.
For what it's worth I used to be an estate agent and worked for one of the UK resi portals for years and went with emoov last year. That was such a nightmare they gave me a refund. Utterly clueless.
I had the same thing with a 'red brick' estate agency a couple of years ago. I felt sure something dodgy was going on, as the agent selling the property was such a total Muppet and seemed to be going out of his way to make sure the sale fell through.Originally Posted by wileeeeeey
Last edited by Maysie; 22nd July 2019 at 17:26.
Purchased my flat from a seller who sold it via Purplebricks. All was fine, the reason was that once the offer was accepted, they essentially passed on the sellers contact details and so we negotiated the rest of the sale directly which worked well.
The less contact with sales/letting agents the better in my experience of property so far.
If I could upload the voicemail I just got from my agent I would. Purple bricks finally admitted the buyer hasn't submitted their mortgage offer so a survey hasn't been booked oh and there's related sale everyone is only hearing about now after, also via purple bricks. May as well re list my house as that chain won't ever exchange.
My view (though not backed by any evidence! ) is that if the seller is scrimping on this, they probably did on everything to do with the house such as maintenance so I would be seeking to get it cheaper.
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That's poor Wiley, I feel for you. When we had just got married and had a young baby we get screwed over by a bank which failed to make our settlement date. As we had sld our house we had to move out on the day regardless. That was a nightmare!
I don't rate PB as a buyer who is watching the local market closely. Some houses seem stupidly overpriced and the photos often look like they were taken with a box brownie. I would say their listings often seem to take a long time to sell.
Is it really sold, or just Sold Subject To Contract? There's a very big difference!Edit: phoned up to book a viewing, and found that it's sold, they hadn't got round to updating the advert, so this is just theoretical now....
It's Sold STC, and the ad says For Sale. Since I wrote that, it occurred to me that the sale might get bogged down, so I'm going to write directly to the owners saying, cash buyer here if things aren't progressing....
Hopefully it's my house
Used purple bricks recently to purchase from. Pretty faultless to be fair. Once my offer was accepted, I was given the vendors details and once it had gone to solicitors what more is there to do? So much so il probably start using purple bricks to sell in the future. Last house I sold last year, agent took about £8k for around 4 viewings.
I haven't had personal experience of Purple Bricks but looking at properties in my area, anything not bog standard always ends up being listed again with a bricks and mortar agent. I guess PB might work in a massively rising market where buyers are desperate.
As a prospective seller their business model seems to work on getting you signed up and then move on to the next seller. Once that's done there's no real incentive to make a sale or put any effort in.
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Currently in the final stages of selling my mothers property, we initially marketed it through a traditional bricks and mortar estate agency. In a nutshell they were awful, they raised our expectations with a high valuation, however this was compounded by a misleading description - they either completely forgot to mention the property had a summer house or described it as a 'lean to', the pictures they took were utterly awful and their agents seemed to have little or no interest in actually selling the property when conducting viewings.
Once the contract period had expired we fired the agency and decided to market it ourselves. Best thing we ever did, saved us thousands and sold it within a week. Yes we have to chase the buyer and solicitors every couple of days but we know exactly what stage the process is in and it's far less stressful than any other sale we have ever been involved in.
Sounds like a plan. Can I ask did you just list on Rightmove and are there any apps to help draw up the floor plan
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