How much should you pay for high-value houses? 1% inc VAT seems achievable for houses worth £500k, but what about £1.5m? I'd imagine less as a percentage

 

I don't think logic has any relevance as far as agents fees go. The high value houses are probably best sold by the agents in that league (Hamptons, Savilles, Cluttons etc) and they still charge 2 - 3% depending on where you are. I've always thought fixed fee plus small percentage but again that is bringing logic into it. dl

 

more expensive houses are more expensive to sell - they require better advertising, better agents and they sell less of them.

 

I can see that, but surely if it costs £3000 to market a £200k house (1.5% charge) it doesn't cost £30,000 to market a £2m house?

If that's the case I'll set myself up selling expensive houses, 3 a year sounds like a nice target

 

And on some big gaffes the impoverished agents will also take a similar fee on arranging sale of contents as well. After all they have got to pick up the phone to an auctioneer........

 

and theres the problem......you loose one sale and you just lost 1/3rd of your income.

i work in investments and often get paid by percentage in some way.....some sales can result in £50k+ earnings but some days it goes wrong and you get nothing. Few years ago i went 8 months without earning a penny......then made £100k in a few weeks.
higher the risk higher the reward, nice and safe is to sell lots and lots of little things for a regular income stream.......not safe is to sell very little for a lot. I always fancied selling airplanes but didnt know where to start and my careers adviser at school said it was a daft idea!

 

Saville's have offered 1.25% + VAT as a starting offer...

 

I think 1% is prob about right for any home between 200k and 2m

 

Well done - puts me in my place

 

OH's boss just sold his place for around £1.0m, paid 1.5% + VAT and had to pay extra for the brochures,, floor plan & virtual tour as well as any additional advertising.

 

I bartered for a fixed £1000 fee which was fair on a £136,000 sale, percentages work in favour of the estate agents they do f..k all anyway apart from take 3 photos and post them on the net

 

if thats all they do then your a mug to pay them £1000.

 

My dad runs his own Estate Agentsand currently has an old mill due to be converted into flats on the marketfor £1.6 million, according to him he will make around £25,000 on that sale.

 

Rather that than a mug who pays 1% or over, actually you are right, thats not all they do, on watchdog last week some estate agents are shown to:



- Deliberately mislead surveyors by lying about the value of other properties that have sold. This could result in buyers paying over the odds for a property.

- Fail to draw would-be tenants' attention to high fees and to lie to them about whether landlords would agree to break clauses in their contracts, resulting in would-be tenants being tied into tenancy agreements for longer than they might otherwise have been.

- Fake signatures on documents.

- Sign up clients by tempting them with a high asking price for their property then, once "on their books", putting in false low offers to the vendors in order to encourage them to lower their price to a more realistic level.

- Put up "For Sale" signs at properties not on their books - this is known as flyboarding and is illegal.

- Undervalue a property in order to sell it at a cheap price to a property developer in return for a cash backhander of £10,000.

- supply a reporter posing as a would-be buyer with a false British passport and false Customs and Revenue documentation, which was supplied in order for them to get a mortgage.

 

Best deal I had was .5% plus VAT worst was 1% plus VAT. If the agent thinks you are important enough they will work on .5%

 

You get what you payfor, end of story.

provided the endresult is O.K.

 

My folks tend to charge between 1 and 1.5% on all their stuff, that's from a 90k 1 bed flat to a 900k mansion etc.

Sometimes depends on the people they are dealing with, if they are nice customers then they'll do 1%, if they are arrogant ***** then 1.5% it is

And as for the estate agents do bugger all thing I could do better etc, if this is the case then why the hell aren't you doing it yourself?? Being exposed to a genuine agency (not some dodgy dealers...) I know the **** they take. The biggest problem they have are the customers, vendors and buyers.

Most of which was done by one chain alone with only two of those points being done by others, but the program did make me chuckle a lot I especially loved the dodgy passport guy.

Best idea is to find the best independant in the area, chains like Foxtons etc are all about the hard sell.

 

so not only do you pick an estate agent that does no work for you.....you also cant find one that doesnt do any of the above.