If you want to save money selling your home but don’t want the risk of paying upfront, finding the best no sale no fee online estate agents should be the first thing you do.
Using a no sale no fee online estate agent means you still get to benefit from their cheaper prices, online management area, longer opening hours, and speed of getting your property on the market. Yet, you also have the security of knowing that you’ll only pay if your property sells.
Not only that, but it also means the online estate agent also has an extra incentive to make sure your property sells as they only get paid if it does!
Best No Sale No Fee Online Estate Agents In The UK – Top 5 Picks
Estate Agent | Cheapest Package | 'No Sale, No Fee' | Our Rating | Review | Official Site |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
£999 | £1,999 | 9.6 | Read Review | Visit Website | |
FREE | FREE | 9.5 | Read Review | Visit Website | |
£245 | From £595 | 9.2 | Read Review | Visit Website | |
Free | £1,999 | 9.2 | Read Review | Visit Website | |
£695 | £1,390 | 9.2 | Read Review | Visit Website |
As you can see, based on overall service Yopa come out at the top of our list.
What Is A No Sale No Fee Online Estate Agent?
Put simply, it’s an estate agent that doesn’t have a physical high street premises you can visit. Instead, they operate online but may still offer local property agents you can meet in-person.
The ‘no sale no fee’ part simply refers to the online agents who offer the ability to sell without risk. In other words, you only pay the listing fee if your property sells successfully.
Which Online Estate Agency Is Right For You?
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Why Use One?
So why is a no sale no fee online estate agent so desirable? Well, there is the obvious benefit of not having to pay anything upfront which means the estate agent takes the risk, not you.
However, it also means there is more onus on the estate agent to be proactive in selling your home as they won’t get paid unless they achieve a sales price you’re happy with.
For many people, these are the two biggest reasons that draw them towards no sale no fee online estate agents. But there is a third reason which people often miss.
Finding the money to pay up-front can be tricky, yet only paying on completion means you can often use the proceeds of the sale to cover the estate agent fees (depending on how soon after the sale the fees are due). This can make cash flow much easier when money is tight.
This means people often decide it’s worth paying a little more to get the luxury of not having to pay until their property has been sold.
We opted to use a no sale, no fee option from an online estate agent when we last sold. While the option to save money by paying upfront was appealing, we preferred the lower risk but higher cost of paying on completion.
Much of this was because our property had an unusual layout and we knew from when we bought it that the previous owner struggled to sell. We were concerned that we might struggle to sell at a price that would allow us to fulfil our dream of moving to the countryside (in which case we wouldn’t sell at all). Because of this, paying on completion made much more sense for us.
Why Trust Our Online Estate Agent Reviews?
As the previous section shows, we have direct, personal experience of selling via a no sale no fee online estate agent.
That means the advice we give is based on our own real-world experience.
We’ve also bought and sold many properties over the years so we have also experienced selling with many other type of estate agent too, including high street ones.
That puts us in a perfect position to know what to look out for.
We also list any no sale no fee estate agents we think are reputable, not simply the ones who pay us (unlike our competitors). That means you’re getting true, honest and fair reviews.
How Our Ratings Work:
When possible, we always sell a property with the online agent we are reviewing so we experience their service first-hand.
However, that’s not always possible so we sometimes consult with other people who have used the agent to get a fair and complete picture.
We then score each agent out of ten in three key areas:
- Value For Money – What do you get and does it represent a fair price
- Customer Support – How easy is it to talk to someone and do they give good advice
- Reputation – What do other customers say about the agent
We then take an average of these scores to give an overall rating. The overall rating helps to decide where in the table of review each agent should sit.
All 9 Best No Sale No Fee Online Estate Agent Reviews
#1 – Yopa (Our Rating = 9.6)
Best Thing = Good Value Packages
Worst Thing = Prices Higher In London
They’re our top-rated online estate agent and we had a good experience with them when we sold our home in 2021 (see our full Yopa review for details), so they top the list here too.
We used their ‘no sale, no fee’ option which costs a little more than their standard packages but means you don’t pay anything upfront. It wasn’t the cheapest around (it cost around £2k) but it was a great package for us and still saved us thousands versus the high street agents we spoke to.
Yopa can do hosted viewings too, in fact they came as standard when we used their no sale, no fee package. Despite this, we still did all the viewings ourselves as we knew we could do a better job of selling our home than any estate agent could.
Yopa are one of the best-known online agents in the UK. In fact, they are now one of the best known of all the agents so we feel they’re a pretty good bet for anyone looking to sell their home.
#2 – Purplebricks (Our Rating = 9.5)
Best Thing = FREE Package Available
Worst Thing = Hosted Viewings Are Expensive
Next on our list are one of the biggest and best-known UK estate agents, Purplebricks.
While they do not offer a ‘no sale, no fee’ option as such, they do offer a completely free to list package that gives you the same effect.
The downside is it might get your property on the market, but it’s a basic listing service that doesn’t include Rightmove so most people will find they need to add on paid extras. These paid extras need to be paid upfront too so it’s not an outright ‘no sale, no fee’ option.
Just note that some paid extras can be quite expensive. For example, it costs £899 to add on unlimited hosted viewings!
Still, some people will find it preferable to paying the larger fees that come with payment on completion. Plus, the service is much improved since Strike took over the brand.
#3 – Griffin Property Co. (Our Rating = 9.2)
Best Thing = Low cost way to sell your home
Worst Thing = No hosted viewings add-on available
Griffin Property Co. offers a really good value for money service at a very reasonable rate. What’s nice is that you can decide which services you actually need so you never pay for services you don’t require.
On the downside, you can’t add on hosted viewings (even as a paid extra) so you’ll have to do a lot of the work yourself. Plus, there’s very little information about the no sale, no fee (pay on completion) option (launched in September 2023) on their website.
What we do know is that £595 is the minimum price you’ll pay and you’ll pay more if you choose not to use their recommended conveyancer. For that reason, we think their pay upfront options are better.
Still, there’s plenty to like and they remain a strong option, especially for those on a tighter budget.
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#4 – SOLD.CO.UK (Our Rating = 9.2)
Best Thing = Multiple Options From Quick Sale To Full Market Value
Worst Thing = Expect A Lower Price If Opting For The Quick Sale Option
An interesting proposition, SOLD.CO.UK is a bit of a hybrid between a normal online estate agent and a quick sale company.
In fact, the offer both types of services as well as a ‘meet in the middle’ option which helps you secure a quick sale but at a much closer asking price to full market value than other quick sale companies.
We recommend you take the time to figure out which package is right for you as it will depend on your circumstances and needs.
#5 – eSale UK (Our Rating = 9.2)
Best Thing = Excellent Value For Money
Worst Thing = Paying On Completion Still Demands a £190 Upfront Fee
Framed as the only estate agent with a money back guarantee, eSale UK are another agent who do ‘no sale, no fee’ but still ask for a smaller upfront payment.
The upfront payment isn’t low either at £190 and the ‘on completion’ part is not the cheapest at £1,200.
#6 – 99Home (Our Rating = 9.2)
Best Thing = Low Price
Worst Thing = Too Many Choices
99Home made a name for themselves by charging an incredibly low up-front fee to sell your home with a no frills package.
However, they’ve since entered the ‘no sale, no fee’ market with a more comprehensive package, albeit at a much higher fee.
#7 – Property Solvers (Our Rating = 8.8)
Best Thing = Ability To Sell Properties Quickly
Worst Thing = May Not Get Full Market Value
Property Solvers are a cross between a quick house sale company and a traditional estate agent. The good news is, they only offer payment on completion.
#8 – SellMyHome.co.uk (Our Rating = 8.8)
Best Thing = Good Reviews On Independent Sites
Worst Thing = Only Offer Percentage Based Packages
SellMyHome.co.uk work more like high street agents. They only offer fees based on a percentage of your final sales price, though they are at least all ‘no sale, no fee’.
#9 – Express Estate Agency (Our Rating = 7.1)
Best Thing = 24/7 Support
Worst Thing = Expensive Commision-Based Pricing
Perhaps one of the better known ‘online’ agents that actually offer a service very similar to high street agents. Their service is so similar, their price mirrors high street agents too and so there are minimal cost savings to be had.
How We Rate Online Estate Agents
You may have noticed that our best no sale no fee online estate agent list isn’t purely based on which agent offers the cheapest price.
Although the cost is a factor, we look much more deeply at the overall service the estate agent offers.
We analyse what you get for your money, we look at what their past customers have said about them, we look at how user-friendly their website is, and a whole lot more.
Where we can, we use our own personal experience of each agent and we also get out in the field and talk to people who have used them to get a wide range of opinions. This all comes together to form the basis of our reviews.
For each scoring factor, we give the agent a rating out of ten, and the average of those scores becomes their overall rating and decides where in the table they’ll sit.
This allows you to easily compare no sale no fee online estate agents to find the best one for you.
If no sale, no fee isn’t actually that important to you, we also have a full online estate agent comparison table that includes pay upfront only agents too.
So, check out our list of online estate agents and find the best one for you.