Yopa has analysed data sets surrounding average house price, estate agent fees, legal fees, disbursements, and EPC costs to reveal how much homeowners will have to spend to sell their home in the various regions of England & Wales.
Yopa’s analysis reveals that across England & Wales, the average seller will spend £5,867 to sell their home.
The largest expense is the estate agent fee. Across the nation, the average fee currently stands at 1.54%, the online estate agency calculates, which, based on the current average house price of £293,976, comes to £4,527.
Conveyancing is the second-largest cost coming in at a national average of £1,000, followed by a further £250 for disbursements – fees that your conveyancer or solicitor will have to pay to other companies during the process of selling your property.
Finally, there’s the additional cost of £90 to pay for an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)
For those selling property in London, Yopa says the average commission cost more than doubles to hit £12,042.
This increase is due to estate agents taking a larger average fee of 1.99% – says Yopa – against the nation’s highest average house price of £517,726, which comes out at £10,312.
Conveyancing is also more expensive in the capital, averaging £1,390, while the expected cost of disbursements and an EPC remain constant across all regions.
London is followed by the South East where sellers pay an average of £7,192, while the South West (£6,505), East of England (£6,316), and West Midlands (£4,936) round off five most expensive selling regions.
Yopa says the most affordable place to sell a home is the North East. This is because the cost of selling is directly linked to the value of your property.
The North East has, by quite some distance, the lowest average house price in the nation (£154,948, which means agent fees cost just £2,270. Conveyancing costs are also the lowest in the country (£880) which means the cost of selling your home comes in at £3,490, almost four-times cheaper than the capital city.
The CEO of Yopa, Verona Frankish, said: “Selling your home can be an expensive endeavour and there are a number of costs that you need to consider when it comes to it. And while homeowners have generally benefited from a consistently strong level of house price growth in recent years, the cost of selling has also increased due to the fact that, in most cases, estate agent fees are directly linked to the value of a property.
“No surprise then, that this commission remains the largest cost to account for when selling your home, with the average agent charging almost £5,000 based on current market values.
“While the early days of the fixed fee model provided a low cost route to selling, the reality of a technology-enabled sales process is not for everyone and the majority of homeowners [over 90%] are still opting to use the services of an agent who charges commission on completion.”
If all agents valued realistically, fulfilled their promises to their clients and competed on service rather than fees – then the number of sellers switching between agents would be less.
Then, if all agents charged listing fees and a separate sale fee – we would have lower fees across the industry. And valuations – there should be a fee for a valuation.
I know… what alternate reality do I live in?!
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The biggest cost to sellers is instructing bucket shop agents who don’t know what they’re doing, will massively under negotiate the client’s sale price, put rubbish chains together, don’t progress them and so create even more fall throughs
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Statistical evidence?
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Gavin Brazg did the research to show that passive intermediary, internet listers achieve 5% less than expected from a full duty of care and skill estate agency.
At the time the transaction price average achieved was £300,000 which meant that if a portal plonker managed to convince a vendor to save 1% of commission their vendor would end up with about £11,400 less in their pocket.
Your days as an estate agents should have armed you with the knowledge that a forced sale will achieve about 10% under market value and un- contested/reduced competition sale to a lone purchaser will be the hardest negotiation for an agent
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I’ve had a think and the old online agent principle linked to ”if you think the professionals are expensive you should see what amateurs cost you” thing has been done to death, i’m also quite possibly going to have a one line reply from our own Jan Buyers about estate agency not being a profession but I didn’t make up the concept although we definitely have amateurs so arguably can have professionals too.
Stephen Hayter used to share his estate agent commission rates from the myhomemove data although hes gone quiet some time ago it was 1% + VAT but it was a good source of detail on this and contradicts this 1.99% by what all of us would call quite a lot.
Robert is of course right and has the stats that were rightly asked for but this aside the biggest cost is VAT / taxes HMRC takes the biggest lump from a move.
Jonnie
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I think you are going to find the biggest ticket item for people moving is usually the SDLT bill, £20,000 if buying at £650,000 on a normal purchase basis, as high as £39,500 if buying as a rental property, so agency fees small beer. So not sure why this non-story ran. A better one would be an analysis on how many months before those funding YOPA decide to cease plowing yet more millions into this lost cause? With the the accounts being four months late and only two directors left, it looks like HMS YOPA is getting ever closer to that iceberg.
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