Selling a home without an estate agent

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If you don’t want to use an estate agent to sell your house or flat, there are some alternative methods for finding a buyer. LDN Properties provides the guide below to outline your choices for quickly selling your home that don’t rely on the services of an estate agent, including attempting to find a buyer on your own or swiftly selling the property to a trustworthy fast home buyer.

1. What services does an estate agent provide for a home sale?
2. Is using an estate agent essential when selling your house or flat?
3. The pros and cons of trying to sell a house or flat without an estate agent
4. Using a property auction instead of selling via an estate agent
5. Selling your home without an estate agent by using a fast property buyer
6. Important queries and answers about selling a home without an estate agent

What services does an estate agent provide for a home sale?

Many homeowners who want to sell their houses or flats simply default to using an estate agent to finding a buyer for their properties because it is a very common method of selling a home. And there are certain benefits homeowners can get through this method of selling that reduce their stress in the process.

Estate agents draft listings for homes that detail the specifications of the property, such as how many rooms it has, and also include photographs that aim to show the interior and exterior of the house or flat looking as enticing as possible to buyers. They pay to advertise these listings online, in local newspapers and elsewhere to try generating interest in the home.

If someone might want to buy the property, estate agents will typically schedule and host viewings of the home. These are essentially guided tours of the outside and inside of the property, so that potential buyers can inspect the home in person. Although estate agents handle these, many homeowners find them to be inconvenient and time-consuming.

For all of the work that they do, estate agents typically require that homeowners pay them commission if they are able to secure a buyer for their properties.

And another con of using an estate agent is the fact that it’s completely unknown when the home might sell, and there are no deadlines associated with this method of selling. Some properties take many months or even more than a year before finding a legitimate buyer.

Is using an estate agent essential when selling your house or flat?

Due to the negative aspects of selling a home through an estate agent detailed above, some people looking for a speedy sale want to know about their other options for finding a buyer.

If you own a home and want to sell it, there are no laws or rules that require you must use an estate agent to do so. You have a number of alternatives available, and some news reports have highlighted instances in which homeowners have managed to secure a great sale price for their properties by doing all of the work of selling on their own. And because they have handled the sale solo this means that they don’t have to pay a third party any fees for helping them to find a buyer. Although this might seem an attractive option, it requires a lot of effort and is not ideal for many homeowners, as detailed further in this guide.

But if you can’t spend the time or money to sell your property on your own, the good news is that there are a number of options for finding someone to purchase your house or flat, as we’ll discuss next. That means it is definitively not required to use an estate agent when selling your property, and the viability of the other methods will depend on your particular circumstances.

The pros and cons of trying to sell a house or flat without an estate agent

Citizens Advice, which is a UK network of charities and other organisations offering confidential and independent advice on a number of topics, notes that it’s entirely possible to sell your home without the assistance of an estate agent or anyone else. It notes that doing so will be cheaper as you won’t have to pay any estate agency fees, but it will require a lot of work from you.

There are several steps in the process and you must ensure that you put maximum effort into each one, because you will not have the benefit of an estate agent or other property selling professional to help correct any mistakes that could be fatal to attracting a buyer.

Get the house or flat in a fit condition for sale

Your very first action should be to make sure that the exterior and the interior of your property are in a condition that is fit for sale.

For the outside of the home this means applying a fresh coat of paint to any chipped paint on window ledges or doors, fixing any broken tiles on the roof, cutting the grass and tearing out any weeds if you have a garden, and generally making the exterior as inviting as possible. With home sales first appearances matter tremendously, and a buyer could be turned off by a scruff exterior.

Similarly, for the interior you should make rooms appear as large as possible, and this can be done by removing any clutter and large personal possessions. People coming to see your home with an interest in potentially buying it want to see the full potential of each room, and that can be hard to do if the rooms are overflowing with your items as you may find in a hoarder’s house.

Decide on the right price for selling your property

The sale price that you choose for your home could be the crucial factor on whether you receive any offers or make any profit when selling the property. If you set the price too high, there’s the risk that you might not get any interest from buyers. And if you set the price too low, you might not make much profit from the sale.

There are several ways that you can try to calculate a reasonable price for your home, starting with looking at property sales websites including rightmove and Zoopla. Search in your neighbourhood for houses or flats with similar dimensions and characteristics to yours that are for sale or have recently sold, and write down those prices. This is a good first guideline for how much you might be able to get for your home.

Then consider using a free online home valuation tool to get a further average suggested price for your property. These tools are run by computers and can give you almost instant quotes for how much your home might be worth, based on analysing existing data on home sales and other information. You’ll typically be given a suggested sale price that’s in the middle of a range from lowest price to highest.

Take those online home prices and then get in touch with estate agents in your area to ask them how much they think your home is worth. You do not need to tell them that you have no intention of using their services, but this will give you sale price quotes from professionals who are involved in the local property market on a daily basis. Get quotes from a few different estate agents so that you can compare them. And remember that estate agents will be trying to get you to sell your home through their company, and so some of their quotes might be slightly elevated in order to encourage you to sell through them.

Advertise the sale of your property everywhere possible

Once you are ready to sell your home and know the price you want to set, advertise the property in as many places as possible. You can submit the listing for your home, which details its rooms and all other features along with photographs of the property, to house sales websites, local newspapers, and also paid advertising spots.

You can also look for free ways to get your listing seen by people in your neighbourhood, including posting notices about the listing on free noticeboards, through social media, and more public spaces. Be sure to include contact details for anyone that wants to see your flat or house so that they can get in touch.

Host viewings for potential buyers to tour your property

If someone sees your home’s listing and wants to see the property in person, you will have to host a viewing where you take them on a tour of the interior and exterior and answer any questions that they might have about it. Be aware that these can take up a lot of your free time and might be inconvenient for your schedule, so be sure that you can spare the effort necessary to make a good impression with leading a viewing.

Also make sure that on the viewings you are able to answer as many questions as possible that buyers might have about every aspect of your home, including its date of construction, any known structural flaws or other problems, needed repairs, boundary disputes, any important missing documentation or certifications, and other facts. Buyers will be wary of a homeowner who is taking charge of selling their own property but cannot provide basic answers to questions about these and a host of other issues.

Accept an offer you like – and negotiate the price if you want to

Hopefully one of the potential buyers that comes to your home for a viewing will want to make an offer to buy the property afterward. If you are comfortable with the price that they are offering then you should get in touch with your solicitor so that they can start the required process of completing the necessary legal paperwork for selling your home.

But if you would like the buyer to increase their offer, you can always attempt to negotiate with them for a higher sale price. Just beware that some buyers will not want to shift at all from their initial offer, whilst others will be open to some amount of negotiation. If you’re dealing with a buyer who could potentially increase their offer, don’t be aggressive in your push for a higher sale price because that could make them walk away. And the opposite can also be true: you might meet a buyer who wants to negotiate a price that’s lower than what you’re seeking. Whether you accept that offer will depend on your unique circumstances. If your home has been for sale for many months and you can afford to take a slightly lower offer, it might be a good idea to take it. However, if you have only been trying to sell your home for a few weeks and someone makes a very low offer, it’s probably advisable that you wait for better offers later.

For more details, the UK government’s website has some useful advice on the process of selling your home on your own, but the sheer amount of information is a helpful indicator to novices about the many different elements in selling a property and the various complications that can arise when trying to find a buyer yourself.

Whether you try to sell your home on your own and are not successful, or whether you would not even consider this option, it’s not the only way to find a buyer for your house or flat besides using an estate agent. There are at least two other routes to selling your home: using a property auction or speedily selling your home to an established fast buyer such as LDN Properties.

Using a property auction instead of selling via an estate agent

Another option for selling your home without relying on an estate agent is to get in touch with a property auctioneer to ask them whether they could successfully sell your house or flat. Auctions can be an enticing option because the date of the auction gives a homeowner a certain amount of certainty about selling, as a viable bid to buy the house or flat is considered a legally enforceable purchase agreement.

When you sell your house at auction, you will agree to a minimum reserve opening price which is the lowest possible amount at which you are comfortable with selling your home. This price is typically set below the price that the property could get when using other methods of selling, because the intent is to make many people interested in the home and bid on it. The auctioneer’s goal is to help you by having many buyers raise the final price by outbidding each other. However, some homes sold at auction fail to receive more than a single bid. Ensure that you set this price at a level that works for your budget when moving to your next property, because there’s the very real risk that you only receive the opening bid at the auction.

And if you’re a major hurry to sell your home, it’s important that you understand there can be a number of delays involved with this method. First, you might have to wait potentially a few weeks or longer between when you list your house or flat for sale in an auction and when the sale takes place. Even if your home does sell, you might also have a delay of several more weeks until all of the mandatory legal documents relating to the sale can be completed.

Also, when you sell your home using the services of a property auctioneer you will have to pay them fees for the work that they did in finding a buyer for your house or flat, and you’ll have to subtract those fees from the total sale profit than you can expect to make. Be sure to account for these costs in your budget for moving home so that you are certain you can afford your next steps, especially if your property only sells for the minimum reserve price. In some cases, however, you might be able to make the winning high bidder be responsible for paying the fees.

One other note about selling via an auction is that it might not be ideal if your home has a unique characteristic, such as being constructed from non-standard material such as concrete. Some auctioneers might not have the expertise to market such homes to buyers, which in turn could depress interest in the property and even mean you don’t receive any bids at the auction.

The team at LDN Properties have written a guide specific to London property auctions that you may find useful.

Selling your home without an estate agent by using a fast property buyer

Another alternative is selling your flat or house to a quick property buyer such as LDN Properties, which is a zero-cost and very swift way to sell without an estate agent.

When you get in touch with us about selling your home, we can often provide an initial no-obligation offer price for buying the property within the first hour of talking with you. And there is no rush to decide on whether to accept the offer, as you’ll have a week to think about it.

Should you wish to take us up on our offer, we will have one of our friendly team members come to your home so that they can inspect the exterior and interior of the property in person. This is also a good time for you to ask them any lingering queries you’ve got about selling.

We will then work with your solicitor to complete the required legal papers for buying your home. Our aim is that within a handful of weeks after you first contact us, we should be able to exchange contracts and pay you the full sale proceeds. We consider that the fastest option for selling your home when compared to other alternatives.

Homeowners also never pay any commission or other fees when selling their flats or houses to us, compared to estate agents or auctioneers who might charge potentially large commission. That’s because we believe people should be able to retain all of the profit from selling their homes.

And LDN Properties can make fast and fair offers to buy the widest possible range of homes, no matter whether they are leasehold or freehold, and without regard to their condition, type, size or shape. Our friendly team of experts has been buying homes in and around London since 2003 and we have many happy customers who have benefited through our speedy process in which we’re able to complete the purchase of most homes in a few short weeks. And that includes the time it takes to pay you the proceeds and exchange contracts on your home.

Here’s a short list of the types of homes that we have bought in the almost two decades in which we have been in business: flats with short leases, houses of multiple occupancy, homes located next to railway stations, inherited retirement homes, plots of land, properties where the owner cannot find important documents such as the title deeds, and homes with the invasive species Japanese knotweed.

Important queries and answers about selling a home without an estate agent

Homeowners looking to sell fast often ask us for further information on selling without an estate agent. Here are some of the main questions we’ve been asked about selling without an estate agent: