Strike (Formerly Housesimple) Will Sell Your House For Free – What’s The Catch?

Thanks for this. I was desperately looking for the small print that would eventually come back to haunt me.

If the only catch is that housesimple are going to try and up sell me products that I don't have to buy in order for them to make money, then I can live with that.

Risky model, but makes sense. Alot of people must be opting into their extra services. I imagine conveyancing is popular.

I'll let you know how I get on. Wish me luck!

My parents listed their property with housesimple last week and when they told me it was for free my instant reaction was to assume they had been taken advantage of. Panic set in so I started googling around to find out if it's a scam where they'll eventually have to pay a massive commission.

Thank you for making it clear and putting my mind at ease. I think the whole free concept is going to confuse people because it obviously seems too good to be true at first.

What you fail to mention is the cost it has to the people buying the property hosted by house simple. They force themselves on you like some telesales company. They phoned everyday trying to get me to use their solicitors etc and the minute I told them we had our own solicitors they stopped contacting us. They don't call you back, respond to emails or keep you updated on any way. They even told us our vendors had had another higher offer and tried to get us to pay more. When I spoke with the actually vendor he said he had told them on many occasions he was honouring our offer. We've been waiting weeks for paperwork to go to our solicitors and I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the situation. They even sent an email message to the vendor saying they are waiting for paperwork from us to progress with the sale which is total BS. So I don't know if the experience we're having is down to a duff employee or if it's the whole company but if I didn't love this property so much I would have given up weeks ago.... Buyer beware, they don't need to sell your property if they're making money from solicitor fees and viewings

HouseSimple are awesome. I got a offer for my property after only three days of viewing at the price I asked for and all for FREE! I hope House Simple continue to Prosper They deserve to. They are definitely the best Estate Agents I know, friendly, truthful,very helpful and professional. and I would recommend them to anyone.

We was not told about the 6 month clause found out today when they took the house simple sign down and didn't replace it with a new sign only spoke to them last week and they said nothing about it just that they would be swooping the signs.we paid £399 for photos when we complained about them they wasn't interested I ended up taking some more and changing them myself.Of the £399 the photographer only gets £50 so they pocket the rest would not recommend this if they were the last estate agents on the planet they do nothing for you except try and sell you things you don't need.

This blog has been really helpful and more importantly the comments left by readers. I am alarmed by some of the comments which elude to an underhanded approach, but if something is free, what can you expect. Ensuring you have a complete understanding of the transaction and what to expect is the basis for a good experience (or at least it should). As I am in the catchment area, an on site valuation has been booked and it will be interesting to see what the outcome is. I was in the process of giving the go ahead to put my house on the market with a local agent, having already had 3 valuations and know what the house is worth. Will keep you and your readers up dated on how this progresses.

We decided to use Housesimple and opted for the £399 package including professional photos. We didn’t really expect much given the fee so just speculating! Our property sold within a few days of the advert going live with 2 full asking price cash offers. We have decided to use their conveyancing service and to be honest the whole process has been good, we’ve had a number of stresses but that’s down to issues with various certificates for the property which we have sorted out. We should exchange imminently and complete shortly afterwards. Given the fees we will have saved I’d definitely recommend them.

Strike sold my house in under a fortnight at no cost to me. It's in a price bracket over £500k so I confident they sold it more quickly than a local agent would've done. I've absolutely no complaint about them or their service. I found them professional throughout. Their website is easy to use and has a website dashboard to keep all parties informed. In my experience they do what they promise. I recommend them.

Just wanted to pop by and say thanks for this post. I read it before making a decision about which estate agent to go with. I ended up putting it on with Strike a week ago and yesterday got the offer I wanted. I did the photos, description and viewings myself, so I would recommend it so far if you're happy to do little bit of graft. Only criticism so far is that neither the buyer or myself could get hold of the negotiator so we ended up negotiating ourselves and agreeing a price over their messaging system - this was quite late on a Friday afternoon though to be fair! The test now is to see how effective they are on the progression phase. Fingers crossed!!

I have read all the comments and the article and only saw one person who mentioned the for sale board. I just thought I would add that 'Strike', former 'House Simple'insist that you have a for sale board. I personally don't like them.

Thanks for the email, very timely. I'll certainly try Strike to sell a rental of mine, I'm ready to cash out while the market is booming!!!

I am using Strike to sell my property. The problem has been that my buyer has used the services offered by Strike, including a mortgage broker and solicitors. My property is a 1 bed flat with no chain involved. 7 months down the line, we are still no closer to closing the deal as the recommended solicitors take 3 days to respond to any email at the earliest and the broker did nothing for 4 months before chasing the lender and so there is still no mortgage in place for the buyer. When looking at the cost of running an empty flat, I can confirm it would have been cheaper to pay an estate agent that didn't recommend Premier Property Lawyers or recommend using their own brokers. Be warned! There is no such thing as a free lunch!

I used Housesimple and completed my sale last July. I have to say, I couldn't fault them. I used the free mortgage advice service which provided excellent customer service. No hidden fees and despite the pandemic, they were right on top if everything, very proactive and keptin touch regularly. I would definitely recommend them.

I am trying to book a valuation but ALL your time slots whilst showing available on your website are NOT. I want a valuation next weekend so if I don't hear back from you quickly will have to arrange with someone else

Yes they may offer to sell the house for free but that just means they will string things out and not provide a memorandum of sale as they wait for someone to come along who will accept their additional services. If the buyer and seller decide not to engage strike in any of their upsold services then expect to be waiting for a long time for the sale to be completed.

You get what you pay for and if you pay nothing then expect a less than satisfactory service.

Strike sold our £525k house in 3 days, we particularly wanted the photo/virtual tour/ floorplan package at £499, as we had the house for sale with a local estate agent for many months and thought it was likely that this aspect of the advertising had been the trouble. The Photographer was very professional, spent 2 hours at the property and had everything ready for the advert in 24 hours.Once sold various individuals from STRIKE contacted us and had managed to get all the proof of funds,solicitors info etc from the buyers within 48 hours which they then quickly passed on to our own solicitor, their other services were offered, but we did'nt need them and did not find STRIKE pushy! We are now awaiting completion, things could still go wrong yet, but STRIKE have done all their bit without any complaints from us, could not really have been any better.