We are selling our own house at the moment in a hope to save money, never knew you could sell without an agent but i'v been on other forums and their are loads of people doing it. If we do sell we could save about £5,250! That will help towards our new place.

I'm honestly not sure what fees you'd be saving on going private, but it's definitely worth considering the marketing costs and the costs to yourself of a delayed sale.

For example, estate agents can often advertise directly online on their websites, and put your property in front of a very targeted audience.

So if you're going a different route, you really need to look at what your actual costs would be to take up this slack yourself.

Also - and possibly more important - is that estate agents may help your property faster. There's little point saving money if it means you can't sell your house for 18 months, and miss out on buying your next home because of it!

People are often eager to focus on benefits and gloss over hazards online - so do be careful you are very well informed about the process before considering going the private sale route.

Hope that helps, and welcome to The Finance Forums.

It is true that you can buy and sell your place without any agent's help but then they can get you much bette deals.

There are both advantages and misadvantages of selling a house without an agent. It might be possible that the agent would have been able to sell your house for much more.

We tried to sell are house without an agent and we had no luck. We had offers but for much less then what we were asking. So we decided to get an agent and we ended up selling it for a little more than what we wanted.

My dad sold without an agent pretty quickly. I didn't like the extra hoops he seemed to have to go through, though and I'd prefer to have someone more well-versed on real estate law on my side.

I guess it depends on the situation, where you live and what the demands are. If there is a boom, you are more likely to sell it on your own.

I have often wondered if owning a house is really worth it. I mean, after you spend all of this money on what is in the house - furniture, repairs etc. how much do you really save in the end? I was told that investing in real estate is not what it used to be. The returns are less...unless you are doing turnovers during a selling time.