Hot on the heels of the legal profession’s adoption of the ‘no win-no fee’ business model, there are now many estate agencies offering their services on a ‘no sale-no fee’ basis. At first glance, it makes a certain amount of sense to pay an estate agency’s fees only once you’ve exchanged contracts, as opposed to paying a fee for just putting a house on the market.
And it’s an excellent way of dipping your toes into the property water to see what kind of price your home would fetch, or even putting your home on the market if you’re not particularly sure you want to move in the first place. This way, you don’t lose out if you take your home off the market – and that’s even if your agent has found you a buyer. Marvellous, isn’t it? In fact, thanks to no sale-no fee, you can have a lot of fun winding up your least favourite estate agent by pulling out of a sale just seconds before the exchange of contracts – and there’s nothing they can do about it. Nothing at all. Oh, what fun.
And this, you see, even though it’s perfect for unmotivated sellers, tyre-kickers and other time wasters, makes no sale-no fee totally unfair on those who really do want to exchange contracts. The concept of paying fees only on the basis of a successful completion is basically flawed. And extremely expensive.
Here’s why: vendors who actually do exchange contracts are subsidising those time wasters and tyre kickers, because those properties that don’t sell are costing estate agencies dearly. It could be because once they’re valued they don’t come onto the market. Or they go onto the market but there’s no interest because they’re priced too high. Or the whole sale falls through because either the vendor or the buyer backs out. Whatever the reason, non-sales add up to another expensive outgoing for the agency.
The average property firm charges around 3200.00 in estate agents fees. But their service is not worth such an enormous rate. We all know that. Despite their unnecessarily high premises costs being one significant factor dictating expensive estate agency fees, no sale-no fee is quite clearly another reason why old fashioned estate agents have to charge their clients such exorbitant amounts.
So it’s not that much of a surprise that people are starting to prefer dealing with online estate agents like eMoov – with their one-off flat fee, they’re assured of actually getting what they’ve paid for.
Going to high street estate agents means paying high estate agents fees. Using eMoov, the uk‘s leading online estate agents instead will get your estate sold by showing it to 170 million internet visitors each month. No extortionate commissions, no percentage fees, no sole agency tie ins. Just a range of fixed, low cost estate agents fees which might even make you start to like estate agents again.
