A couple of years ago, the statement in this headline would not have been a realistic prospect. Find out what has changed…

This article is about how a company called Strike – Purplebricks’ fast growing rival – came to offer a zero selling fee service. It also provides the background information about high street agent fees, Purplebricks’ fees. You may wish to skip the article and go straight to Strike to find out more. (Disclosure: afflilate links are included on this website). 

Introducing Strike: The Zero Fee Estate Agent

The only way to sell your property with no estate agent fees has been, until recently, to sell it privately, and that simply was not practical in most situations.

Why was selling privately not usually a good idea? Simply because the most buyers are looking on websites like Rightmove and Zoopla, and they don’t take private property advert listings.

The only way to get your property in front of the buyers on Rightmove and Zoopla was – and still is – to hire an estate agent. That meant paying estate agent fees, typically around 1 – 1.5% of the sold price of the property, plus VAT at 20%.

About Purplebricks and its money back guarantee

Most people with a property to sell have heard of online estate agents. Companies like Purplebricks have spent millions of pounds over the past few years advertising. The offer with online estate agents, since they began to take off in around 2015 (the year SellingUp.com was founded) has been that you can sell your property for a very low fee compared with using a high street estate agent.

This fee was usually anywhere from a few hundred pounds to around £1000 – or a fair bit more if you were selling in London.

For example, Purplebricks, at the time of writing, offers to sell your property for a flat fee – from £999 or £1,499 in London and the surrounding areas.

While for many property sellers this would mean saving money on a traditional high street agent’s fees, there is a potential major disadvantage of using Purplebricks.

The flat fee to Purplebricks is payable upfront and applies whether or not your property sells.

To re-iterate that point, if a high street estate agent takes your property on its books and it fails to sell, you won’t owe them any money. With Purplebricks that is not the case – you will have paid (or will owe them if you delayed payment) the full fee.

Now in order to allay property sellers’ fears about losing that substantial amount of money, Purplebricks offers a money back guarantee. That sounds good – but it is not a simple offer – there are terms and conditions.

Vitally, you will not be eligible for the money back guarantee if you have received what Purplebricks calls a ‘Proceedable Credible Offer’ within 10 months.

That means that there is room for debate over whether an offer that you have received is serious and worth accepting. You may not feel the offer is the right one to accept for a variety of financial or personal reasons – but if Purplebricks disagrees, you will not get a refund.

How Online Agent Strike has changed everything

One of the first online agents was called HouseSimple. Much like Purplebricks it offered to sell your property for a flat fixed upfront fee of a few hundred pounds.

As more online estate agents appeared HouseSimple looked for ways to stand out from the crowd and offered a ground breaking no sale no fee business model. That meant if your property did not sell, then HouseSimple did not take a fee – just like a traditional estate agent, but in many cases far cheaper option.

This offer was very popular with property sellers, and HouseSimple continued to grow. As well as making money from the selling fee, HouseSimple was able to pass people on to mortgage brokers and solicitors and related services to make additional money.

The company realised that there was potentially more revenue to be made in these additional services than from the propery selling fee. What they needed was growth.

In July 2020 HouseSimple made an announcement that would change everything. The company was from then on to offer to sell properties without taking any fee. That is right – zero fees for selling your property. All of their money would be made from optional referrals on sales of related services.

Such an enormous shift promted the company to launch a rebrand and it changed its name from HouseSimple to Strike.

As part of its free offer, Strike is providing home valuations in properties across the UK. Depending on your location this may be an in-person visit or an online appraisal. To check your postcode and to take advantage visit the Strike website.