Online estate agent HouseSimple has launched a No Sale, No Fee payment plan, saying that consumers are uncertain about paying money upfront.
The new package costs up to £995 and replaces a pay-as-you-go option launched in July last year and which charged £9 a week plus a success fee of £495 if the property sold.
The £995 fee can be reduced. If the seller uses conveyancing and mortgage broking services offered through HouseSimple, the fee falls to £795. If the seller uses only one of the services, the fee is £895.
HouseSimple is the online agent of choice for Carphone Warehouse founder Sir Charles Dunstone who, together with business partner Roger Taylor, has invested £5m.
The new payment plan will be offered alongside the current £395 fixed fee option, where the fee is payable on completion of the sale or after 12 months, whichever happens first. With the fixed fee option, there is a discount of 10% if the seller pays it upfront.
HouseSimple continues to offer a free week’s trial for new customers.
CEO Alex Gosling said: “We have introduced the No Sale, No Fee model because we recognise this is a fee structure that the British public are familiar and comfortable with.
“In particular, for people who have never sold a property online before, there is always likely to be a degree of uncertainty about paying upfront.
“It’s understandable for them to think, if I pay my money upfront, how committed will they be to selling my house?
“We wanted to address that concern and make the service more accessible to all, because we are confident once someone uses us to sell their property, they won’t use a traditional estate agent again.
“Online estate agency is the future of this industry. Not only do we offer an equivalent service to the high street agent for a fraction of the cost, but we also secure more sales than high street estate agents and achieve a higher asking price on sales.”
To date, HouseSimple claims to have sold or let £1bn worth of property, saving UK home owners a total of £20m in fees, and on average £5,247 per house sale.
HouseSimple claims to be the UK’s second largest online estate agents by number of monthly property listings.
Comments (24)
As my old man said “always hire the best professional you can afford in business and life. You will rarely be pleased that you paid little for a service that never delivered its expectation” he coined that rather long phrase after he hired a cheap lawyer thinking they were all the same to deal with a business dissolution. His two partners used an expensive lawyer. They walked away with (almost) the lot.
On the face of it,as estate agents, we all “do the same” but I can tell you every week how I’ve eeked out another couple of (sometimes tens of) thousands extra that the client didn’t expect. That’s where good agents differ.
I work in the NW and All the 2+ branch agents round here offer £999 deals anyway. there are some offering £699 deals too. Online agents are very unlikely to take hold although 1 or 2 are popping up. We charge 1.5% and have no problems charging 3x as much as these cut price agents on a 200k house.
As John Ruskin said: “It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money – that’s all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing that you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot….”
“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” – Red Adair
I have never even heard of anyone taking any money upfront for any sales properties so to me advertising No sale No Fee doesn’t make no sense whatsoever.
Why would anyone want to lie about anything I’m not sure because it always comes back to you and bites you in your ”back”, it’s just not worth it from my personal experience.
I’m sorry – maybe I’ve just had a long day so far and there’s plenty left in front of me – but I haven’t got a clue what this post is meant to accomplish.
Please enlighten me. I can’t be the only one who doesn’t ‘get’ what you are meaning…
If the national average house price is circa £200k and the fee probably circa 1.5%. How do they save the average customer £5,247? If they’re just operating in the south east they must be doing so very discreetly. Off market sales from an “online” agent perhaps?
The average fee for the UK is 1.3% and falling – The average fee, according to the only published, most comprehensive database in the UK (that of Stephen Hayters, MyHomeMove – source on PIE).
Any agent using anything else is almost certainly making the figures up and, thus, in breach of CPR, ASA, TPO and TSO law and rules.
January 2016: CEO Alex Gosling said: “We have introduced the No Sale, No Fee model because we recognise this is a fee structure that the British public are familiar and comfortable with.
January 2017: CEO Alex Gosling said: “We have introduced high street branches
because we recognise this is a model that the British public are familiar and comfortable with.
January 2018: CEO Alex Gosling said: ‘We have introduced higher fees because we recognise that the British public are familiar and comfortable with the concept of ‘you can’t get ‘owt for n’owt’
January 2019. CEO Alex Gosling was unavailable for comment having recently left the failed business to spend more time with his family.
Cheap will be attractive to some, just like expensive will be attractive to others. But if you want real volume, value is king.
Hold the phone!
Cheap?
Some agents charge 1.75% some charge 1% or less. The old mantra “charge what you are worth” works for me.
I only want to take on 4 or 5 houses a month, I want to sell all but will be happy at 3 or 4 per month.
If I don’t like the client/house/third party or other complications my fees may go up a lot or I might not take it on at all, after all if you have a difficult client and you have tried to commit to every whim and demand and the client is still not satisfied then cut your loses, move on, let some other agent deal with them and it could be for best all round too. Holding on to clients because your contract demands 12 months exclusivity isn’t in your interest. The firm I’m with only employ 3 people, we have 4 medium to large agency competitors trying to take No.1 spot. And so far they have all failed, this month we have out listed and sold all of them put together because we didn’t take on what we couldn’t manage.
Any one listening to this? let PB or HS or whoever offer what ever they want, you stick to what you know best.
These kind of comments keep me sane….
“we also secure more sales than high street estate agents and achieve a higher asking price on sales” if Pinocchio ‘claimed’ that I reckon he’d secure a very lucrative sponsorship deal with Stihl Chainsaws to do hourly demonstrations on the shopping channel.
Not only do we offer an equivalent service to the high street agent for a fraction of the cost.
In the same way a Kia pride offers the equivalent service of a Bentley Continental at fraction of the cost.
To which I know the reply will be, something like, ‘We want to change the face of UK estate agency both offering a better deal for house sellers’, or ‘We don’t have a High Street office so passing the savings on to you .. meaning you save money’.
Utter codswallop.
So if you’re not cheap, then what are you supposed to be – reasonable priced and frugal?
Really? Actually, yes. Boring but true. Frugal is often called for and that’s life – come on – you are a professional estate agent… Cheap (Frugal) is simply the lazy mans way out to open an estate or lettings agency … and not taking pride in having a common sense approach to being an estate or letting agent. What would impress me beyond the stars is an online/call centre/hybrid agents charging the same as High Street agents? .. If someone does that .. then I will impressed.
Great posts…love it.
If the online brigade are so full of sanctimonious s£$+e about saving money for the public then why don’t they do it for free?
Agency is a business for heavens sake & within that business we all want to make as much profit as possible (exactly the same as within any other business)….so why this rush to make it cheaper for people & not make any money by providing a service which is clearly non profitable???
I used to work for a company that took their staff out for a meal to the local Chinese Restaurant as a way of saying thanking to their staff .. but only on £10 buffet night and you had to buy your own drinks. I am sure you have had similar experiences and in the end, everyone notices – and the impression you give is not a positive, warm cuddly thing either .. it’s an impression that, once made, is almost impossible to repair.
I used to work for another firm, and had a conference. Yes, but this conference had a full fun fair on it .. in two big halls of the NEC. Full sized dodgems, MerryGo Rounds, Proper Helter Skelter, huge Walzter … this was proper good and I have treasured the memory of that night for years. God I loved working for them.
In your life .. be it work, family or friends …. has there has never been a time when you were impressed, fascinated and astounded by an act of cheapness?
Of course not…
So, you cheap fee agents, who are you trying to impress when you are being cheap?
Anyone can set up an agency and be cheap .. it’s like all your USP is .. ‘hey we sell houses but we are cheap’
… what are you getting from it? .. being cheap?
contd..
Online Estate Agents on the Cheap
In the history of human relationships, no one has ever been attracted to someone of the opposite sex because they are a tightwad. No woman has ever said, ‘wow, look how he buys his Christmas presents in the January Sales to save money – that’s so *****’. No single woman has ever looked at a man in the supermarket and said, ‘I want that man’s babies – see how he only buys the Value range’. Whilst a man would get away with the chat up line’ How is it like to get paid smoldering at the camera while wearing expensive clothes? … the opposite could be said if he said ‘£5 for the Tesco’s Jeans and a £3 Primark top.
Cheap is not a turn on..
We all know cheap people… I mean, how is cheapness going to make anybody think better of you? Really think this through: the best that can come from a cheapskate persona is a low-level job with no prospects of advancement because people want to elevate people who think big or think broadly.
contd ..
Sell more at higher prices than the high street agent? Does this goon have data to support this fact? What an utter *******.
Yet another on-line agent changing its approach to a fairer pay later business model. I’m looking forward to 2018 when eye reports that sellyourhouseonline.com or whatever else they are going by have abolished the £995 fee. Instead they are offering a 1.75% fee that includes a local office, staff that have years of experience and knowledge, local advertising, databases of buyers, pro active marketing and most importantly human interaction and customer service. Slowly but surely they are getting there, took a while but the penny might be dropping 🙂
Spot on grantlance – Every day these dreamers are creeping a little closer to realising you can’t give Joe Public something for nothing.
“Online estate agency is the future of this industry” Nope, Estate Agency is service industry based on trust, knowledge and experience. It isn’t a retail industry where vendors are happy to flog their largest asset through a rep who’s looked up a valuation on the internet and whacked on 10% to win the instruction.
“We wanted to address that concern and make the service more accessible to all” Nope, we are not making enough money are are trying to win more instructions.
“It’s understandable for them to think, if I pay my money upfront, how committed will they be to selling my house?” Nope; the 6 local agents that come round all point out this obvious elephant in the room.
Is the word “claim” the modern way of audaciously lying through your teeth but thinking its not a lie because your fingers are crossed behind your back or is it the get out of jail free card for being completely deluded.