Online estate agent Yopa offers sellers no sale, no fee  

Online estate agency Yopa has offered to waive upfront fees for any customer selling their home through the firm – but there’s a catch.

If you opt for the new no sale, no fee option and the firm is successful in finding a buyer for your property, they’ll charge a flat rate fee of either £1,495 or £2,695 depending on where you live.

By contrast, if you choose to stick with Yopa’s traditional fee structure, you’ll pay less – either £839 or £1,399, with the option to pay upfront or through a 10-month payment plan.

 The move seeks to combat one of the criticisms of online flat-fee estate agents, in that upfront fees mean you will pay whether you sell or not, whereas a traditional High Street agent takes a percentage cut that’s often more expensive but only charged if you actually sell your home.

The no sale, no fee option stands in contrast with Yopa’s original pricing, which while lower cost is a fee you must pay regardless of whether or not the agent sells your home.

It also marks Yopa out from its main rival, the biggest online flat-fee agent Purplebricks, which only offers an upfront flat fee charge of either £849 or £1,199 in London and the surrounding areas.

Both Purplebricks and Yopa operate a hybrid model, with local estate agents who handle people’s home sales, but the business is based online rather than operating from High Street offices, which helps cut costs substantially.

If you want either to conduct viewings they both charge an extra £300 fee.

Daniel Attia, chief executive of Yopa, said: ‘Moving home can be stressful and expensive and we set up Yopa to try and make the experience of selling your home easier, faster and cheaper than it has been in the past.

‘Today we are launching a new way to use Yopa’s home-seller service where the customer only pays when their house is sold. 

‘This is further evidence of our ambition to make Yopa a fully customer-centric organisation – set up by customers, for customers. Yopa is all about simplicity and transparency, hence the customer now has the choice of when they want to pay for our services.’

The move comes after rival online agent Purplebricks, was forced to defend its up front fee of around £1,000 – payable even when the firm fails to sell your property – following claims by analysts at Jefferies that it had sold just 51.6 per cent of the homes listed on the site in November 2016 within 10 months.

Daniel Attia: ‘We set up Yopa to try and make the experience of selling your home easier, faster and cheaper than it has been in the past.’

This is a similar success rate to the overall market, but below the company’s claim of 88 per cent.  

However, while Purplebricks keeps the flat fee irrespective of the property selling, traditional estate agents only charge fees after the sale has gone through. 

Purplebricks at the time said it ‘firmly disputes’ the claims by Jefferies, and said that the study was incorrect. 

What is Yopa offering?

Yopa now has two options for those wishing to use its service. Sellers can pay a flat fee of either £839 or £1,399 in London even if they don’t manage to sell the property.

Alternatively sellers can pay Yopa nothing if they don’t achieve a sale and if they do, then pay a more expensive flat rate fee of either £1,495 or £2,695.

With the no sale, no fee option you can choose from two levels of service.

The core bundle includes listings on Rightmove, Zoopla and Prime Location, a for sale sign, support from a dedicated local estate agent, access to Yopa’s personalised online control centre, out-of-hours customer service support and a centralised sales-support team. 

The premium bundle is available for an additional £300 and includes Yopa’s dedicated local estate agent managing and conducting all of the seller’s viewings as well as Rightmove and Zoopla premium listings service.

How does it compare to rivals? 

According to the Land Registry, the average value of a home in November 2017 was £243,339.

Selling at this price through Yopa on the no sale, no fee option is likely to cost you £1,495 unless you live in some of the more expensive boroughs in London, where Yopa charges the higher fee. 

Purplebricks does not offer a no sale, no fee option. 

Emoov and Housesimple also both offer a no sale, no fee option and charge a flat fee of £1,495 on completion. 

Hatched offers this choice too, though it steers customers towards the fixed fee option, warning the traditional no sale, no fee option is ‘by far the most expensive’.

EasyProperty recently ditched its deferred payment plan and now charges an upfront £295 listing fee, with a further £595 paid on the sale of the property. If the property fails to sell, customers pay only the initial £295.

Traditional high street estate agent fees vary substantially, from under 1 per cent to about 3 per cent. Many quote a fee and then charge VAT on top of it.

Conveyancing firm MyHomeMove says that its most recent research in 2015 showed the average estate agency fee as 1.3 per cent plus VAT – a total of 1.56 per cent. 

A traditional estate agent charging a total of 1.56 per cent including VAT would cost £3,796 on the average £243,339 home.

If you have a larger home – selling for, say, £500,000 – your typical online agency fee would still be £1,495, but the traditional agent’s commission could be £7,800.

Advocates of the traditional High Street estate agents argue that their experience and local knowledge can get sellers a higher price, more than covering any extra fees.

For a more in depth understanding of how the different online estate agents compare, read our guide here.