Saving on costs when selling your home

Why it costs money to sell your home

Although selling your home will hopefully make you some profit, there are costs involved covering various aspects of the sale process including listing the property and the legal fees. This means that your budget planning for selling your home needs to include every possible cost, which you’ll have to deduct from the final sale price you receive.

Creating a budget for the process of selling your property is a useful step because it can help inform choices you’ll make about whether to make changes to the home before selling, how you would like to go about finding a buyer, and other crucial steps that might incur costs.

For example, the choice of how to seek a buyer will determine whether or not you have to pay potentially expensive commission on the sale. If you ultimately decide to sell through an auctioneer or with an estate agent, you will need to pay a fee if they manage to sell your home. But you avoid paying any commission by selling to a no-fee quick buyer like LDN Properties or selling on your own.

Being able to save money on the sale of your property will benefit you as you prepare to move to your next house or flat, whether that’s purchasing your next dream home or looking for somewhere to rent. This guide offers insights on some of the expenses that you might face throughout the selling process, including legal fees, removal charges, and more.

You’ll also be given advice on what to do about potential costs if you own a “problem” property that could be repaired before selling. And you’ll get an overview of what to expect from the various options available for finding a buyer beyond just their potential costs.

Costs you might face when selling your home – and how to tackle them

In this section you’ll find details about some of the most common costs that buyers experience when trying to sell a property – estate agent fees, auctioneer’s commission, legal fees, and removal charges. Not all of these fees will apply in every scenario, by way of example if you sell through an estate agent then the issue of having to pay an auctioneer commission won’t apply.

Whilst this section focuses on commission in terms of estate agents and auctioneers, later on in this guide you’ll also be able to read more details about the specific steps involved with selling via those two methods, as well as selling to a quick buyer and selling without any help.

Estate agents will charge fees

If you decide to sell your home through an estate agent, you get the benefit of them taking care of listing, marketing, and organising viewings for your property, so this can help you avoid a lot of stress in trying to make a sale. But estate agents will also charge fees for doing this work and securing a buyer, and you can expect to have to pay them between one and three percent of the final home sale price, which can be a significant amount if your house is very expensive.

A simple way to address this cost is to negotiate with your estate agent on the total fees and commission they propose to charge. You might be able to get them to agree to a lower amount that is better for your budget, reducing your overall costs involved with selling.

Be sure that your estate agent is a member of The Property Ombudsman (TPO), an independent organisation that provides an alternative dispute resolution for homeowners and estate agents. Members of the TPO have to comply with certain rules and standards about selling, so you want to find an estate agent who is a registered member as it means they will likely be in compliance with the TPO standards.

Negotiate with auctioneers to reduce costs

Alternatively, you might be contemplating selling your house at auction. This can be an enticing option because of the potential that you might be able to make a lot of money if many people are interested in your home and launch into competitive bids, driving up the final sale price. But be cautious that whatever price your home sells for at auction, the final amount you receive will be after subtracting the fees that the auctioneer will charge. They do all the work of listing and selling the home, and expect to be reimbursed for it after the property has sold.

Much like negotiating with an estate agent, you can discuss the fees with your auctioneer before agreeing to have them sell your home. Ask for their fees and then talk with them to see if they can lower their charges. If you can manage to have them agree to a lower commission, you have the possibility of cutting costs incurred when selling your property.

Legal fees are a necessary expense

You’ll likely need to hire a solicitor or conveyancer to handle the extensive legal paperwork involved with selling your home, and many of them can charge high fees.

A simple way to reduce these costs is to ask around several different solicitors to find out how much they charge. You can also talk directly with solicitors to negotiate a lower fee than whatever they tell you as an opening estimated price.

Removal charges can be a last-minute expense

One expense that homeowners often don’t think about until the last minute is the cost of paying removal companies to transport their furniture and other belongings to their next home. If you have a large home with a lot of items to move, the removal company will charge you more. Fees for removals can range from a few hundred to several thousand pounds.

If it’s possible for you to move yourself – perhaps because you have a small home or have friends willing to help for free – this can be a simple way to avoid paying for a removal company.

But if you need to use the services of a removal company, the best way to cut costs is simply to ask around a number of companies and compare prices. Don’t automatically take the first offer a company makes, because a competing removal firm might offer you a much cheaper price.

Selling your house or flat “as is” can help with reducing your costs

Beyond the costs involved with the method that you choose for selling your home, or the legal and removal expenses, another factor you might have to review can occur when you’re the owner of a property that has some type of physical damage that needs repairing.

Subsidence is a typical example of a structural flaw that can make many buyers view your home as a “problem” property that is less valuable than a similar home without that damage. These buyers will either completely lose interest in purchasing your property, or they will significantly lower their offer price by at least the amount they expect it would cost them to fix the issue, should they end up buying your home – and this in turn lowers your potential profit.

If you invest in repairing the damage at the property then this could stop such a situation from occurring, hopefully resulting in higher-price offers and getting more buyers interested.

But for those owners who have decided that reducing costs when selling is a top goal, pursuing such repair work might not be viable. These owners may not have the money, time or energy necessary to proceed with the repairs. Checkatrade notes that the average price for fixing subsidence as of 2024 can be about £12,500, although the exact cost will be unique to your property and it will depend on the size of the problem that needs fixing.

For those owners that have subsidence, or any other physical defect, at their home, do not fear that it will be impossible to sell at a competitive price even if you sell it “as is” without resolving the problem. There are still solutions available, in particular contacting a quick buyer like LDN Properties that is known for making fair and fast offers on almost any type of home. In the next section, you can read more about how to sell this way, and other options to find a buyer.

Advantages and disadvantages of four options for selling your home

Perhaps one of the most crucial choices that you can make when selling your house or flat is deciding which way you want to find a buyer. The options are usually selling at an auction, selling without any help, selling to a quick buyer, or selling via an estate agent.

As noted earlier in this guide, some of these methods will require that you pay commission, which will increase your expenses. But the selections also differ on other important factors such as how long they take, with selling to a quick buyer such as LDN Properties often being by far the speediest options because it should only take a few weeks to complete.

To assist in making this decision, make a note of your main aims with selling, including how fast you want to find a buyer, your ideal sale price, and whether you are willing to pay any commission. Then compare your priorities against the specific facts about all four strategies below and this should help with identifying the closest match to your needs.

Selling at an auction

As noted earlier in this guide, auctioneers will charge you commission if they succeed in selling your property. This is often charged at about 2.5 percent of a property’s auction sale price, although the precise rate may be higher or lower than this amount. The fee will cause your expenses to rise because it will be subtracted from the sale proceeds immediately.

The auctioneer’s fee covers the costs of their work in selling your property, which starts with developing a listing that describes the home and includes photographs of the interior and exterior. They will advertise this to generate interest in your house or flat, then host the auction, and if your property sells then they will oversee the completion of that process.

When selling this way, you will have to choose a reserve price, which is the lowest price at which you agree your home can sell, as the Essential Information Group website explains. Ensure that you pick a price that should produce a profit from the sale, even after you deduct the cost of the commission that the auctioneer charges.

This is not the speediest way to sell a home because there is a lot of waiting involved, including many weeks or months between the day that you select this method and the day that the auction happens. If you manage to sell the property, the winning bidder then has about a month to sign all the required papers and complete the other steps needed to finalise the sale.

Selling without any help

Selling a property on your own is a good way to reduce costs because you would avoid having to pay an auctioneer or an estate agent any commission on the sale. But beware that any saving you make as a result could be eliminated by the money that you will need to spend on the various tasks that you’ll be responsible for throughout the selling process.

The steps involved with selling a property include creating a listing, advertising it, scheduling viewings to give prospective buyers a tour of the inside and outside of your home, hearing offers from interested buyers and aiming to get one through to the exchange of contracts.

All of these tasks will take up a lot of your time, energy and money, and selling through this method can easily become quite stressful. It’s only recommended usually for homeowners that have prior success with selling properties, or that have a friend or family member with that experience who is open to assisting with the selling process without charging a fee. Even with such knowledge, selling without any help often takes many months or even longer.

If you are committed to not paying any commission in order to keep your costs down but you don’t want the stress involved with selling on your own, consider as an alternative selling to a quick home buyer like LDN Properties. These companies promise to never charge owners any commission when purchasing their homes, which helps with reducing your expenses. And you get the extra benefit of a much more rapid sale, as the entire timeline when selling to a quick buyer is only a few weeks, and that includes the final stage of exchanging contracts.

Selling to a quick buyer

Quick buyers are companies such as LDN Properties that have the funds in place to buy your home immediately, with no waiting to first get approved for a mortgage to cover the cost of the purchase – a process that can take many weeks or months and is not guaranteed.

As a result, quick buyers can move swiftly to complete the purchase of a property within a handful of weeks, and that covers the final steps of exchanging contracts and paying you the full sale proceeds. This is much faster than all three other methods typically, because they can take at least several months to complete and in some cases last more than a year.

When it comes to cutting costs, quick buyers are also an excellent choice because they never charge owners any fees when purchasing their properties. That compares favourably to selling through an auctioneer or an estate agent because you would need to pay either of them commission if they were able to eventually find a buyer for your home.

And for your extra peace of mind when selling this way, you can ask if the quick buyer can prove it belongs to TPO, because the organisation also writes rules to guard owners against fraud in the quick buying industry. All genuine TPO members, like LDN Properties, must stick to these rules, giving you sufficient protection. Don’t sell to a non-TPO member as it might be a scam.

Selling via an estate agent

Selling this way can also increase your costs, as described earlier in this guide, because you’ll have to pay the estate agent commission if they sell your home. Often this is within a range from 1.15 percent to 1.40 percent of a property’s sale price, but may be above or below this. The fee adds to your expenses because it will be subtracted right away from the sale proceeds.

The fee pays for the estate agent’s work in finding a buyer for your home, which includes putting together and advertising a listing, organising viewings, hearing offers and then trying to get a serious offer from a buyer through to the final stage of exchanging contracts.

Expect a long wait on average when selling through an estate agent because it might take a number of months or even more than an entire year to find a buyer. And even if someone makes an honest offer on your property, they could later change their mind and rescind it – and they can do this without suffering any penalties, so long as contracts are not yet exchanged. You’d then have to restart the search for a buyer, adding much more time to your selling schedule.