Dicky99 wrote:For those with up to date knowledge of selling properties, what is a typical % fee charged by a high street Estate Agent for selling a dwelling worth circa £300k.
In a competitive market I would imagine that there's not much variance in the fee charged between agents. Is that the case?
Hardly. I'm in the process of selling and buying, both properties in London, and I got valuations and quotes from seven estate agents, six high street and one hybrid, and both valuations and quotes were all over the place.
Of the high street ones that quoted a percentage it ranged from 1.25%+VAT to 2%+VAT. One had a minimum £ amount which worked out to around 2% based on their valuation, and another had just a fixed £ fee that also worked out at around 2% based on their valuation.
The hybrid one was Yopa,
https://www.yopa.co.uk, hybrid meaning they're an online estate agents (no high street presence) but they do have local agents, who you meet and interact with, do viewings, etc. My initial thoughts about Yopa were, yeah, they're cheap and you probably get what you pay for.
But the place I'm buying was marketed by Yopa and one of the things Yopa facilitates is direct communication between buyers and sellers and after talking to the seller I decided to use Yopa for selling my place too, and I have to say, I'm delighted.
I instructed them Sunday 18-Feb, the photographer & floor plan guy came the following Friday, the listings went live in the afternoon of Monday 26-Feb and by 8pm I had ten people wanting viewings. My Yopa agent decided to take a "stack 'em high" approach and do all viewings last Saturday afternoon and by that morning we had 22 booked in. 16 turned up and by Sunday evening I had 7 offers, most of them acceptable in themselves. My agent talked to them all on Monday and told them to put in their "best and final" offer by yesterday (Tuesday) lunchtime, and yesterday afternoon I accepted one of the two equal highest offers, which is for more than all but one of the estate agents valuations (and he was an outlier).
Of course, there's a lot of variables and I think I was lucky with my Yopa agent, who is local and has been in the estate agent game for a couple of decades.
A couple of things about Yopa's fees,
https://www.yopa.co.uk/fees. The advertised "from" is if you Pay Later (on completion or after 10 months regardless) but you
must use their conveyancer. If you Pay Now it's £200 more but you can use whatever conveyancer you like. I did ask my agent about No Sale No Fee and she said it was a fixed £5K+VAT. I went for the
Ultimate package, paying up front (so £2,199).
There are some that are totally online and some that are actually free (Purple Bricks & Strike that I know of) but you either have to do pretty much everything yourself (photos, viewings, etc) or buy one of their "extras" to do them. I've no experience so can't comment.....