What we learned from selling our home with Purple Bricks. From the get-go, their online platform felt like browsing a family-friendly café menu: clear, concise, and surprisingly pleasant! The local property experts were like your best mum friends—there when you need them, armed with advice and a reassuring smile. They helped me take the reins of the selling process (with a fab app that made communication a breeze) minus the usual hefty agency fees. Honestly, it was refreshingly straightforward and easier than convincing the kiddos to put on their shoes!
First off I want to prefix this post with the acknowledgment that I know we are SO fortunate to be in a position to own our own home. I know that its something many people are striving towards and that house prices are so mad these days its not a possibility for most
I don’t come from a family that has ever owned their own home, my parents rent as do all my siblings so the whole ‘homeowner’ thing is a little new to me. Having lived in Bristol for over a decade I think it’s so rubbish that lots of people born here won’t be able to ever buy. But that’s a post for another day or I’m going to get a little sidetracked!
As I said above, buying property wasn’t ever a goal for me or even something I aspired to do. The house we have lived in for 8 years was bought by Tom when we were 24 and 27 respectively. We had only been dating for a year and a half (and living together for a year) and buying a home was something he very much wanted to do. At the time he had been allowed to cover his boss’s maternity leave which put him on a higher pay grade for a limited time and a better chance of getting a mortgage. As I had some loans and debts to pay off we decided it was better if that was something he did by himself. Our home in Easton was bought for a little over 100k in the summer of 2010.
If you’ve followed me on here for a while you’ll know the house needed a LOT of work and over the years we accomplished a lot, some major work and some aesthetic. The first few years were slow as we had no money to work with but we got there eventually and I’m proud of the house and home it became.
Roll on six years later, marriage and two kids down the line we felt like it was time to move on, to a different area, a bigger house, and a new project. We decided to put our house on the market the first time around in Spring of 2017 but it didn’t sell, (which for Bristol is crazy).
After checking out three local estate agents finally went with the one that had been in our area the longest, had the lowest commission and we got the best vibe from.. saying that we didn’t get a great impression from any of them!
The first was smarmy, quoted us the lowest, and said there was no point even taking pictures or putting them online as he had someone lined up to buy it. We found out from friends that this was generally the tactic for this agent, sell lower but quicker. It makes sense I guess from their point of view as the difference of 20k for them is around £200 commission but is a lot of difference for the seller!
The second was professional but had charged a nonnegotiable 3% commission which was 2% higher than the other quotes we’d had and does make a big difference in the grand scheme of things.
The third had a school teacher vibe, an older company that hadn’t caught up with modern times (they didn’t see the point in floor plans for example) didn’t have mobile numbers and generally felt a bit old-fashioned. We went with them as they felt like the best of a bad bunch and at this point, I just wanted to put it on with someone and get it started.
The whole experience of trying to sell our home the first time round was awful. We wanted an open day but they couldn’t find enough people so over the next six weeks we were called up randomly to fit people in at odd times and never received any offers. I found it hard to keep up with work, two kids (and at the time no childcare), and making the house presentable. It was the business time of year for me to work so we decided after a good think to take it off the market and instead focus on Tom quitting work and us working together.
It’s funny how life works as we were so disappointed at the time not to be able to sell our house and start somewhere new. It made me feel trapped especially as Tom leaving his job would mean buying in the future would be down to my wage alone (you need three years’ tax returns if you are self-employed to be able to get a mortgage). I guess we took a gamble that by the next year (and my third tax return) I would have made enough for us to get a mortgage somewhere and that we’d be able to sell our home.
So our second and most recent attempt at selling our home (this time with Purple Bricks) was completely different and a wonderfully pleasant surprise!
After our bad experience with selling the first time around we decided to go a bit more modern and chose a nontraditional estate agent. We went with Purple Bricks and I can’t recommend them enough! We chose the service where the agent also does all the viewings and the total cost for all of this was just over a thousand pounds. If we had chosen just them marketing it and not doing the viewings it would have been around £800 but I think it made such a difference to have someone who knew what he was doing selling our home for us.
Our agent from Purple Bricks (Nathanial) arranged an open day and I think we had about 12 couples in total turn up. Within hours of the it closing we had already received 6 offers over asking! One viewer hadn’t been able to bring his girlfriend and so contacted me through the Purple Bricks messaging platform to ask if they could come back the next day. I have to say that I almost didn’t bother as we already had so many offers but as the house was still so tidy I thought why not? These guys ended up buying the couple that eventually bought it. By the time the weekend was over we had 9 offers over asking which was such a turn around from our first experience.
As we were selling at the same time as last time (spring) I can only imagine that having a good agent made such a difference. He also took amazing pictures with a good-quality camera (no phone snaps here) and just brought a more modern approach to the process. He was also contactable at all times (weekends, evenings ect) and went above and beyond to get us the best deal. In the end, our buyers had to drop their price a little bit due to not being able to get the mortgage they thought they would, which tied them in with the second highest bid but we kept informed all the time that our agent and he managed to get them to go a little higher than they had come back with so that we could buy our new home.
Purple Bricks Fees
I had been worried that paying a one-off fee would mean there was no incentive to get us the best deal (and therefore the best commission) but I feel like he just wanted us to be 100% happy with the service and for that, we’re so pleased and grateful. Especially as the fee was a lot less than any commission would have been.
I was constantly surprised at how out the way he went negotiating and keeping contact with us both when solicitors were being slow and both parties felt a little in the dark (as our sale dragged on 5 months in the end). He also acted like a traditional agent in the sense that he met our buyers with the key, and kept in contact to the end even though he didn’t need to!
We were so pleased with how it all went this time round and I wanted to write this post in case anyone is about to sell theirs, I can’t recommend Purple Bricks enough.
I hope this post has been helpful to any of you guys looking to be in this situation. You can see Purple Bricks houses for sale here. Do let me know if you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer any you might have!
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