Hatched Review

Hatched Review – Founded as early as 2006, Hatched can count itself among the first estate agents to pop up online. However, without the financial backing of it’s larger rivals, it’s struggled to become a household name.

At A Glance:

Although their logo perhaps reflects their age, their website is actually quite up to date and more along the lines of colourful branding you’d expect to see on newer online agent websites.

Here’s how they perform in the most important areas:

• Potential to save you thousands over high street agents
• Allows full management of your property listing online
• Only 85% of people rate them as ‘Great’ or ‘Excellent’ on TrustPilot
• Prices are dependent on you also using their conveyancing service
• Even if you pay upfront you’ll only get 12 months to sell your home

By the looks of these stats, Hatched appears to be struggling to fly the nest! Still, let’s look a bit deeper before we judge too much…

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How Much Does Hatched Cost?

The Hatched online estate agent website claims that you can choose from “2 easy options”. However, things aren’t quite as simple as that but we’ll get on to that in a moment.

For now let’s just go with two main options which are priced at £495 if you pay up-front or £895 for an enhanced premium package which includes a number of listing upgrades and the ability to defer your payment for 10 months (note this is NOT a ‘no sale, no fee’ price). As standard you get:

• Floorplans
• Listings on Rightmove, Zoopla, and more
• ‘For Sale’ board
• Dedicated local expert
• Personalised mortgage advice
• Buyer vetting
• Online viewing schedule
• Offer negotiation service
• Personal support through to completion
• Online platform to manage everything

There’s something pretty major missing from the list above, can you spot it? That’s right, as standard, you don’t get professional photography included unless you plump for the £895 enhanced package.

That’s a pretty major downside as the photos are what creates the first impression and turn online listing visitors into in-person viewing appointments! We do not recommend the standard Hatched package for this very reason.

In addition to this, there’s that caveat on the pricing options we mentioned earlier. Although there are only two packages to choose from, each one has two prices depending on whether you want to use the Hatched conveyancing service or not.

If you decide to use your own conveyancing service you’ll pay an extra £200 for the standard package (bringing the price up to £695). The enhanced package does not become more expensive but does change to a ‘pay up front’ price if you opt not to use the Hatched conveyancing service.

There is also a ‘no sale, no fee’ option available but strangely, this isn’t advertised on their website. Instead, you’ll have to speak to their customer support team to find out it will cost you £1,695 which is a little higher than most other online agents charge.

Hatched Add-Ons:

When conducting our Hatched estate agent review, we found the following added extras were available on the standard package:

• Professional Photography (£100)
• Rightmove Upgrade To Featured Property (£199)
• Zoopla Upgrade To Featured Property (£99)
• Virtual Reality Tour (£79)
• Social & Digital Marketing Pack (£149)

The above prices were all correct at the time of writing but we advise you check the Hatched website for the latest pricing and available add-ons.

The fact that there is a virtual reality tour add-on available is a nice touch and shows the company is quite forward thinking. However, we still can’t quite get over the fact that professional photography isn’t included as standard!

What’s nice though is that all of the above add-ons are included if you go for the enhanced package which does offer really good value for money.

That means there are only two other add-ons to mention that are available on both the standard and enhanced packages. 24/7 accompanied viewings are available for an additional £180 which can be very helpful but only covers you for four individual viewings or one 2-hour open house. An EPC is available for £85 if you need it.

How Selling With Hatched Works:

Like most other online estate agents, Hatched try and speed up up the selling process by taking photographs and measuring your property during their valuation visit. You can ask them not to do this but by doing so, they save some vital time in getting your property on the market.

Remember, you are in control so you can either book the free valuation first, or go ahead and pay for the package you want to do for and then arrange your valuation visit afterward.

Once your local representative has visited your home and taken all the measurements, you can expect your property listing to be ready in around two days, with the listing appearing on Rightmove and Zoopla a day later.

Viewing bookings and feedback are all done online so you won’t be waiting for calls from an agent, everything will appear on the Hatched customer website. You’ll be conducting viewings yourself (unless you’ve chosen the accompanied viewings add-on) so make sure you know how to sell your home.

Once you’ve accepted an offer, the Hatched team will help oversee the sale but the majority of the work will be done by the conveyancing service you appointed.

So, Is Hatched Any Good?

Our Hatched review has found that there is some significant value for money to be had if you use the enhanced package which gives you several premium upgrades and the ability to defer your payment.

They also have a virtual reality tour option for your property listing which shows they are very forward-thinking and not afraid to embrace new technology to help sell your home.

Hatched also have a reasonable reputation on independent review sites such as TrustPilot and AllAgents, although there is still room for improvement.

Although we are pleased to learn they do offer a ‘no sale, no fee’ package, it’s strange that this isn’t advertised on their website. It’s almost as though they don’t want you to choose it as they lack the confidence that they can sell your property.

Negatives Of Hatched:

The biggest negative of Hatched estate agency is one which regularly appears with online estate agents – the insistence of making you pay more for using your own conveyancing service.

Not all online agents do this, but the ones that do, often mislead customers when doing so. Hatched do make it fairly clear on their site so we are not suggesting they mislead anyone, but the very fact they do it is most certainly a negative rather than a positive.

Our Hatched review found another problem too. We tested out their live chat feature on a Saturday afternoon after visiting the website and getting this rather pressurising message: “Hi, when would you like to book your free valuation?”.

As if the ‘pushy’ sales message wasn’t bad enough, when we asked a question about their pricing, we still hadn’t received a reply over an HOUR later. That simply isn’t acceptable no matter what the reason.

We’ve already touched on the fact that the standard package doesn’t include professional photography so we won’t go into that again but it’s another black mark against the Hatched brand.

Hatched Review – Summary:

Overall our Hatched review has found that this isn’t necessarily a bad online estate agent. It has several things going for it and offers good value for money, even when compare to some of it’s closest rivals.

However, while it performs solidly in most areas, it doesn’t really perform spectacularly in any. And that’s probably the reason why it’s never managed to become as well-known as some of its rivals despite having been around since 2006.

A perfect example of what we mean can be seen when you look at the independent reviews and realise that the excellent reviews are spoiled by the occasional terrible review. They seem mostly OK but occasionally let themselves down.

Add into that the negatives such as the extra charges for using your own conveyancing service, the lack of photography included in the standard package, and some aggressive and slow responses on live chat mean there are definitely better options out there.

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