How easy is it to sell your house without an estate agent?
HouseWeb is one site that lets you sell your house without an estate agent. The biggest and first direct sales company! So what advantages are there? You will save massively on fees for starters! Even if you negotiate estate agent fees you could end up paying many thousands of pounds to the estate agent! With houseweb prices start at £47 so you can see the huge potential for saving there too.
So what does an estate agent do and can you do it instead?
You would want to provide the same information as an estate agent. That is room dimensions, information about the property and photos. The photos should be taken to make the property look good and clearly show the house. Decluttering is an essential first step before even thinking about getting a camera out! Something some estate agents don’t tell you – but when you’re in control you can re-take the photos if you decide you don’t like them, or declutter more! Sometimes it’s hard to be objective – we’d be happy to look at your photos or house listing and make suggestions on how you can improve the look!
There are three packagaes on houseweb. The cheapest allows only one photo, the next level up allows 6 and the most expensive allows up to 25.
You could decide which option to go for by making a list of all the rooms you think would be worth having a photo of.
Why exclude some rooms? If you can’t get a good photo of a room even though it looks fine, then it might be worth not including a photo of that room. Sometimes you need a wide angle lens on a camera to get a good photo of a smaller room. If the lighting is difficult then you can also find it easier to not include a photo!
For a house that needs a lot of work you might put some people off by showing every last room.
You can add extra photos, EPC (That’s an energy performance certificate), various other options, but the most important one we think is a for sale board! Whilst you could just stick a notice in your window or make your own, then the professional one you’d get from houseweb is worth the money.
You should take your time taking the photos and writing the listing. Get someone else to look it over first to give you a second opinion.
I’ve often seen photos selling a house that have been taken on a rainy day and it just makes me feel sad – 99% of houses and gardens look better when the sun is out! Wait another day to take a photo if it’s rained!
Houseweb is definitely worth a look if you want to avoid huge estate agent fees.