There used to be a time when it was not uncommon for estate agents selling fees to be 2% plus VAT on the sale price of your home. This was seen as acceptable at a time when a three-bedroom detached property for sale in Swindon was selling for under £100,000. Now that the same property is selling for £350,000 a 2% fee plus VAT would be £8,400 which vendors are not prepared to pay. The ‘concession’ estate agents make is to reduce that fee down to 1.5% plus VAT, but that still leaves the vendor with a bill of £6,300 which is l going to hurt and, importantly, can see an offer being rejected rather than accepted. Where £340,000 would be an acceptable offer, £335,000 could have been if it weren’t for the fees.
Here at Moovahome in Swindon for a long time we have recognised that with the value of property today, estate agency fees need not be as high as they used to be in percentage terms, to the point where we believe that £650 is a far more reasonable sum to pay for a good marketing service. We also understand that personal circumstances may dictate that you need a very comprehensive service, in which case we do charge more, but again this fee is kept to an absolute minimum where we will only ever charge 1% of the purchase price of your property and better still, that fee will be capped at £2,495.
Maybe now you are beginning to get the picture about Moovahome. Where property for sale in Swindon is concerned we want to do everything we can to help you sell your property, and that includes keeping our fees as low as possible. There is another positive aspect to this, and that is from the point of view of the purchaser. Mortgages today are appreciably harder to come by than they used to be and, as a consequence, the purchase price of a property is more critical. Your lack of flexibility on the level of offer you can accept will also have an adverse effect on any would-be purchaser who has a mortgage offer, but one which cannot be increased. In putting an extra £5,000 into the negotiating melting pot this will ultimately give you more flexibility where accepting an offer is concerned, and that is as it should be.
You only have to open any newspaper, go to the property section, and there will invariably be an article about the high costs of estate agency fees and the boom in online estate agents. Unfortunately, we feel that the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction where online-only estate agency is concerned as buying and selling your home is an extremely personal matter and deserves a personal and hands-on approach from your estate agent. That is where we at Moovahome score heavily again because our fees are a little different to those charged by online-only estate agents yet not only do you get to meet us in person but we are able to provide you with a free valuation for your property based on what we know properties for sale in Swindon are selling for.
Just to ensure that you give us a call here at Moovahome there is one other thing that we should add, and that is that we charge no upfront fees whatsoever and operate a strict no sale no fee policy.