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Consumer Advice July 2009

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6 steps to selling your home online

If you decide to sell your property yourself, you'll cut out the estate agent and save yourself thousands. If, for instance, your property sells for £150,000 you'd have to pay commission of £3478 at 2%, money that can be put to far better use when you move. Here's how to do it:

1. You will have to write the property description, take photos, arrange viewings and negotiate any offers yourself, so be prepared for some hard work.
2. Research similar properties in your area to see how much they've sold for; register with a site like www.zoopla.co.uk for a free market snapshot for your postcode. It tells you what's sold and how much for, what the average price and turnover is as well as listing some current properties for sale. Even more useful, add a few details about your property and it will calculate the current value or put you in touch with a local estate agent for a free estimate.
3. If needed, get the HIP or HR sorted. Home Information Packs (HIPs) are now required for any property that goes on sale in England and Wales (or a Home Report - HR - in Scotland); in Northern Ireland HIPs aren't compulsory. A HIP or HR gives potential buyers important information about the property up front. Ask friends who they used, look in the phone book or online, expect to pay around £200. Before booking someone to do the job, though, check that they have a redress scheme in place in case something goes wrong.
4. Private sales sites will help you advertise your property, providing for sale boards and tips on how to sell. They can't do much more than, however, as it's deemed to be estate agent territory. Have a look at www.houseweb.co.uk, which offers various packages and a free guide to selling. The £47 package gives you an ad with one photo on its site, the £129 package and above lists the property and a number of photos on all the leading property sites, while the top package for £599 also includes the HIP, 20 photos by a professional photographer, a floor plan and for sale board. You could also try www.thelittlehousecompany.co.uk or www.noestateagentsplease.co.uk, which offer similar levels of service.
5. Provide the phone number that it's easiest to reach you on. Take the calls and make yourself as amenable and available as possible regarding viewings.
6. While you can do the conveyancing yourself, it's probably easier and a safer bet, to hand it over to your solicitor once you get to the offer-accepted stage.
   * If you can't bear the thought of doing away with the estate agent completely, use an online-only one. They're much cheaper and provide a comprehensive service dealing with viewings, offers and negotiations. Try www.thelowcostway.co.uk which charges a flat fee of £339.25, it can also arrange your HIP for you and no sale means they don't charge you for this. Or try www.housesimple.co.uk, which offers different options, depending how long a contract you choose, and the amount of commission charged. It charges from £245 with 0.1% commission on top - that's a total of £395 on a £150,000 property.

Very interesting...

Q: When the credit card company deducts any money I send them, it comes off the balance transfer amount with no interest, rather than the purchases I've made - leaving that debt totting up 17%. Is there anything I can do?

A: Obviously the card companies are in the business of making money so most, as is the case here, will set your payment off against the cheapest debt first. But there are some that don't do this: Nationwide Gold Card operates an order of payments scheme that pays off the debt with the highest interest first. You can transfer balances for a 3% fee with no interest to pay for 13 months, there's also no interest on purchases for three months but the interest goes up to the APR of 16.9%. Go to www.nationwide.co.uk. Or try the Saga Platinum credit card if you're 50 or more. It has the same order of payment feature, interest-free balance transfers (3% fee) and purchases for nine months, as well as a low APR of 11.9%! Go to www.saga.co.uk/money for more.
• The other option is to have two separate cards: one for balance transfers and one for purchases.

Q: I recently bought a TV and wondered whether I should go for the extended warranty on offer. A friend however tells me that under EU law, I'm covered for two years anyway. Is this true?

A: Yes it is, if anything goes wrong within the first two years you have the right to ask for a repair or replacement under EU law, irrespective of the manufacturer's warranty or guarantee. So keep the receipt safe. Better than this is the Sale of Goods Act in the UK (SoGA) which states that 'for up to six years after purchase (five years from discovery in Scotland) purchasers can demand damages (which a court would equate to the cost of a repair or replacement). Obviously you need to be reasonable about this as not everything can be expected to last six (or five) years and you might need to issue small claims action to make the company see sense. But we should expect big purchases - a TV or computer for instance - to last longer than a couple of years and it's good to know there's a law in place to help if there's a problem.

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