selling a house - keeping costs down ?

[daviddd]

I am going to put my house up for sale shortly, and am interested in anyone who has succesfully avoided the usual high local selling and conveyancy costs applied by most local solicitors. In my experience the performance of solicitors is not too high either. I can see plenty of ads for online conveyancy (from £200 to £500) but how do these perform I wonder? And surely it's easy enough to place ads for the house myself rather than pay someone else to do it? Or not?

[Torvaig]

http://www.caithness-business.co.uk/submit_sale.php
Give this link a try!

[badger]

I'd recommend advertising it yourself, given the pathetic state of local companies' websites, but not sure about DIY conveyancing. Local solicitors are very expensive but buying is a minefield and there's too much money involved to risk problems for a comparatively small amount. I've seen what can go wrong even using solicitors.

[Niall Fernie]

Our property pages are the busiest part of the Business Index by a large margin. Worth putting in as much detail as you can. The particulars can be up to 64k of text, which if you try this out with text document created with Notepad, is a huge lump of text. When submitting a photo it should be under 300k but if you do submit one and find its not added to the page you can always mail it to me and I'll add it on your behalf.

As our property ads are free to, I'd say its always worth a go. If you do end up going to a solicitor/estate agent, you may find they also advertise with us anyway (often in tandem with their own web site) and we can update/replace the entry with anything they put together for you.

[paris]

If i were selling a house in cathness i would definitely put it on one of the agents websites up there as people like myself cannot travel up and down all the time because of distance but still need to see whats on offer , I brought my home there via a web site and sold it via a web site. What im trying to say is people wanting to move to caithness go online to view agents properties for sale/rent, but i totally understand about the cost. jan x

[j4bberw0ck]

DIY conveyancing isn't practical and no purchaser in their right mind would buy off someone who wanted to do it that way. You'll find that law firms offer a "package" of conveyancing plus sale fees; it's negotiable - get several, from different firms. If you want conveyancing only get a firm quote (from several firms) as they'll weight the quotation if they're not going to get the easy money of a sale.

I have no experience of "on line conveyancers" but watch out for small print limiting their liability if something goes wrong. With lawyers, you have the backup of professional indemnity insurance and the Law Society of Scotland. People get cynical about the Law Society but if your lawyer screws up, they can be a powerful friend.

I'm not a lawyer (and I'm as cynical as the next man on the subject generally) but conveyancing needs to be done right. Nothing, by the way, to stop you getting a quote or quotes from law firms in Glasgow and Edinburgh where competition tends to keep prices lower. Then you have a bargaining tool for your quote from local lawyers..... http://www.teddies.be/Forum/images/smiles/pfeif.gif

Good luck.

[badger]

Just to clarify, when I said do your own advert I meant (of course !!) create your own website if poss. or at least take some good pics. and then put it on the .org. Anyone wanting to move up here will find it quickly just searching under Caithness. Much more user friendly than the agents' own sites as well as being cheaper. There are some really good ones on the .org and the "professionals" could take lessons. Makes me mad that they charge so much for details which are old-fashioned, often inaccurate, on hard unfriendly sites.

It's a shame that you need to use solicitors for conveyancing but just isn't worth risking.

[daviddd]

Ok, thanks everyone, that's given me something to think about. Caithness.org is defo a place to use; it is such a busy site and so many folk from outside the area read it. I wasn't proposing 'do it yourself' conveyancing at all - but there are cos. that specialise in it, some of which have indemnified lawyers - and as I say charge from £300 to £500 flat fee. I wonder if anyone up here has ever used them? This one http://www.legalmove.com/Quote/QuickQuote.aspx charges under £200 and claims to be Britains largest online conveyancer.

[donnalee1994]

Ive just sold a piece off land useing the free to advertise web sites and as long as you dont replying to emails then thats the best way i found :) hope this helps

[daviddd]

Ive just sold a piece off land useing the free to advertise web sites and as long as you dont replying to emails then thats the best way i found :) hope this helps
which websites do you mean Donalee?

[cuddlepop]

I know they advertised on the caithness property pages on this web site.We look at it too.Good luck Daviddd.:D

[Torvaig]

I have always used the org for renting out my property and it has proved very useful indeed.