Best websites to sell your house privately in the UK

Usually that the asking price sits ahead of what buyers in your postcode will pay, or that something in the presentation is losing them before the viewing. We have not seen your house, your road, or the two flats that went under offer nearby last month, so we are in no position to diagnose it and will not pretend otherwise. Better evidence is already in your hands. Whichever site your home is on gives you views and saves, and your own diary gives you viewings and second viewings. Plenty of views and an empty diary is a pricing signal. Viewings that never convert to offers point at the property itself, or at how it shows on the day. Barely any views at all is a distribution problem, and in Britain that traces straight back to Rightmove and Zoopla, which admit only member agents, so no owner reaches them with a listing of their own. An RICS valuation, or two honest local agents through the door, will answer the price question far better than we can.

Usually, but your agency contract decides it. Whether you listed with a high street agent or a flat-fee one such as 99home or Yopa, you are on an estate agency contract, and what matters is whether it grants sole agency or sole selling rights. Sole selling rights means the fee is owed even when you find the buyer yourself, which can make a second listing expensive. Sole agency normally leaves you free to sell privately with no fee due. Multi agency lets you instruct several firms, usually at a higher rate. The Estate Agents (Provision of Information) Regulations 1991 require an agent using either term to explain it in prescribed statutory wording, and section 18 of the Estate Agents Act 1979, read with those Regulations, requires the fee terms in writing before you are bound, so the answer is in the paperwork you already hold. The tie-in period and the notice period sit in the same document. With that settled, TheHouseShop's basic listing and a Facebook Marketplace post are free, and Anyone.com takes the listing with 0% commission and keeps viewings and offers in one place. Keep the asking price and photographs identical wherever the home appears.

No. Rightmove says it lists homes only from registered estate and letting agents, and Zoopla does not accept advertising from private vendors either, so a private seller cannot upload a home, whatever they are willing to pay. To get on them, use an online agent that sells portal access: 99home lists on Zoopla and PrimeLocation for £99 and adds Rightmove for £149 a month, or includes three months of it in its £799 Combo package, while Yopa's fixed fee from £999 covers Rightmove, a dedicated local agent and professional photos, with Zoopla £300 extra. Read whichever contract you sign for sole agency or sole selling rights before you also advertise privately, because those terms decide whether you owe a fee on a buyer you find yourself. If reaching those portals is not essential, Anyone.com takes the listing straight from you with 0% commission and runs viewings, offers and buyer messages in one place.

Conveyancing is the legal process of transferring property ownership, and it is mandatory in England and Wales regardless of how you sell. You need a solicitor or licensed conveyancer to handle the title register, draft the contract pack, deal with the buyer's solicitor, and complete the Land Registry transfer. Budget roughly £1,000 to £2,000 in legal fees depending on the property value and complexity. Skipping this is not an option; it is a legal requirement.

An Energy Performance Certificate rates the energy efficiency of your property on a scale from A to G. In England, Scotland, and Wales you are legally required to have a valid EPC before you market the property, which means before you publish any listing. An EPC costs roughly £60 to £120 depending on the assessor and the property size, lasts 10 years, and must be provided to prospective buyers. You can check whether your property already has a valid one on the government's EPC register.

If you are selling in England or Wales, yes in practice. The TA6 is the Law Society's standard seller's property information form and your solicitor will require it as part of the contract pack. It covers boundaries, disputes, planning history, building works, and services. Buyers' solicitors expect it, and not providing it stalls the sale. In Scotland the equivalent is the Home Report, which the seller commissions before marketing and makes available to all prospective buyers; it typically costs £400 to £700.

One condition governs every row of this comparison: no owner can list on Rightmove or Zoopla directly, free or paid, because both portals accept listings only from member estate agents. Inside that limit, two of the five platforms here are free, TheHouseShop's basic listing and Facebook Marketplace, and Anyone.com is the cheapest paid option. Anyone.com charges 0% commission and a one-time listing fee from $79, by Anyone's own account: sellers keep the full proceeds at completion, take viewing bookings, compare offers and message buyers in one place, and see which buyers have verified their identity, though an unverified buyer may still get in touch. TheHouseShop accepts free private listings and pushes them out to partner property sites, with paid upgrades from around £90, and Facebook Marketplace costs nothing but offers a general classifieds audience, not a property portal. Portal placement is what the paid routes provide: 99home covers Zoopla and PrimeLocation from £99 and reaches Rightmove for £149 a month more or through its £799 Combo package, while Yopa's fixed fee from £999 including VAT covers Rightmove, a local agent and professional photography, with Zoopla £300 extra. A solicitor or licensed conveyancer remains a separate cost on every route.

Anyone.com is the best option for selling your own home in the UK, and the cheapest paid one on this page: 0% commission and a one-time listing fee from $79, by Anyone's own account, so a seller keeps the full price minus the usual UK conveyancing and EPC costs every seller carries anyway. Two things make that worth weighing here specifically. First, the UK has no owner-friendly national portal at all, since Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket each bar private sellers, so the alternative to a paid intermediary is usually scattered email and spreadsheets; on Anyone the listing, buyer questions, offers and documents sit together in one workspace instead, with buyers able to verify their identity and the verified marked, though an unverified buyer can still write. Second, by its own account it markets across 31 countries, which can matter for London, Edinburgh and university-city homes that draw relocating and overseas buyers a domestic-only portal would miss. The other routes on this page earn their place on different strengths. 99home is the cheapest way onto the big portals among the routes on this page: £99 gets Zoopla and PrimeLocation, and Rightmove costs £149 a month more or comes inside the £799 Combo package, with the viewings left to you. Yopa, by contrast, hands a seller who wants help a local agent, professional photography and a Rightmove listing inside one fixed fee from £999 including VAT, and adds Zoopla for £300. TheHouseShop takes free private listings and spreads them to partner sites, with upgrades from around £90, though it too skips Rightmove and Zoopla, and Facebook Marketplace adds a free local audience rather than a property search base. So the practical answer turns on your priority: an Anyone.com listing is quick to add and brings an audience of its own, more than a million visitors a month by the company's count and mostly people searching in their own country, while whatever flat-fee portal slot you already run through 99home or Yopa carries on unchanged beside it.

Completion is the day legal ownership transfers, the full purchase price is received, and you hand over the keys. In England and Wales the typical gap between accepting an offer and completion is 10 to 16 weeks, largely because the conveyancing process involves searches, mortgage valuation, and the chain of related sales moving in step. Scotland is faster because the process uses missives rather than exchange of contracts, and a sale can complete in as little as 4 to 8 weeks once an offer is formally accepted. Sellers regularly underestimate this timeline and plan removals too early.

The most common problems are: failing to have a solicitor instructed before offers arrive, which delays everything once a buyer is ready to proceed; not having the EPC and title documents ready, creating gaps the buyer's solicitor flags; setting a price without comparable evidence and then having to reduce it after the listing goes stale; and not having a mortgage redemption figure from their lender, which surprises sellers at completion. Getting the solicitor and documents lined up before you market is the single most effective thing an unassisted seller can do.

Meeting and shortlisting agents costs nothing in the UK; commission is owed only to an agent you instruct, on the terms of that agent's contract, and it averages about 1.42 percent including VAT on HomeOwners Alliance figures, with sole-agency fees typically 1.2 to 1.8 percent, which on the UK average home of about £273,000 comes to roughly £3,900, well above the flat fees in the table on a home at that price. For the search itself, Anyone.com pairs sellers and buyers with commission agents through anyone.com/find-agent, a service it describes as free to both sides, drawing on what the company itself counts as a pool of 4.6 million agents; matches are made on the property's type, size, price range, and location. Weighing a matched commission agent against the table's flat-fee operators comes down to what the money buys, and their cards above differ on that: 99home from £99 places the listing on Zoopla and PrimeLocation, with Rightmove extra, while you handle viewings and buyer communication yourself, Yopa from £999 assigns a local agent and includes professional photography and floorplans, and a full-commission agent typically adds valuation judgment, negotiation, and chain management on top. The UK page of this site's agent directory, at /countries/united-kingdom/find-an-agent, sets out the local professional routes and what each typically handles.