Buying
Buying a house without an estate agent in the UK
Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket all take listings only from agents in a redress scheme, and "private sale" is used here for two completely different things.
Where private sellers actually list in the UK
Each of these is a separate pool. A saved search on one tells you nothing about the others, so set up alerts on every one you intend to use.
- Anyone.com Listed by the owner
Homes listed by the owners themselves, which the big three portals will not carry at all. You deal with the seller rather than with someone instructed to get the highest price out of you, and your conveyancer does exactly the same job either way.
More than 31 million active listings across 31 markets, agent-represented and owner-listed together. Rightmove carries only listings from agents in a redress scheme, and states its own UK total as over 900,000 properties for sale.
Search owner-listed homes ↗ - Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket Agents only
Buyer filter None, because private sellers are not admitted
All three accept listings only from estate agents who belong to a government-approved redress scheme. A private seller cannot post directly on any of them. What muddies this is that flat-fee listing services, which are registered agents, will place a private seller's home on them for £99 to £999. So a home you see on Rightmove may well be an owner handling their own sale, and nothing on the listing tells you which.
- TheHouseShop Owners can list
Buyer filter Private listings are labelled as such, and can be browsed on their own
The largest UK site that takes listings directly from owners as well as from agents. Volumes are modest against Rightmove, but this is the closest thing Britain has to a dedicated private-sale portal.
- Facebook Marketplace and local groups Owners can list
Buyer filter Property for sale, filtered by area
Where a lot of British owners advertise first, particularly for lower-priced homes, ex-rentals and probate sales. Nothing is checked, and there is no obligation on a private seller to have anything ready before they post.
- Auction houses and probate listings Owners can list
Buyer filter Catalogue listings, published a few weeks before each sale
A genuinely separate pool that never appears on the portals until it is gone. Contracts exchange on the fall of the hammer, so your searches and finance need to be finished beforehand, not afterwards.
How many homes this really covers
Nobody publishes a reliable figure for how many UK homes sell without an agent. HM Land Registry records the sale, not the method, so the percentages quoted on private-sale websites have nothing behind them. What can be said is that the flat-fee route puts a good share of owner-run sales onto Rightmove anyway, so the genuinely off-portal pool is smaller than the portals' exclusion policy suggests.
The Estate Agents (Redress Scheme) Order
Anyone doing estate agency work has to belong to an approved redress scheme, and that requirement is the reason the portals shut private sellers out: no scheme membership, no listing. It also explains the flat-fee industry, which exists to lend a private seller the scheme membership they lack. Worth knowing as a buyer, because a seller using one of those services has no agent working for them at all, whatever the Rightmove listing implies. Deal with them as you would any private seller.
In force since 1 October 2008. Read the legislation
Buying one, step by step
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Work out which kind of private sale you are looking at
The industry uses the phrase for off-market homes still sold through an agent, and London alone had roughly 14,000 of those in 2025. Private-sale services use it for homes with no agent at all. When someone says private sale, ask which one they mean before you spend an afternoon on it.
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Search the portals and the private sites separately
Rightmove and Zoopla for the bulk of the market, TheHouseShop and Facebook for what is not on them, and the local auction catalogues for a pool that moves on its own timetable.
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Instruct a conveyancer before you offer
With no agent chasing the chain, the pace of a private purchase is whatever you and the seller make it. Having your solicitor already instructed is the single biggest thing that stops a private sale drifting.
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Get a survey rather than relying on the mortgage valuation
A lender's valuation is for the lender. A Level 2 or Level 3 survey is for you, and on a private sale there is no agent who has already talked the seller through what needs disclosing.
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Expect the seller to fill in the property forms anyway
The TA6 and TA10 forms are part of any English conveyance. A private seller may not have seen them before; your solicitor will send them across, and the answers are where the useful information is.
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Exchange, then complete
In England and Wales you are not committed until exchange, and neither is the seller. In Scotland conclusion of missives does it. Either way the money moves solicitor to solicitor, never to the seller directly.
Check before any money moves
- Which stamp duty applies: SDLT in England and Northern Ireland, LBTT in Scotland, LTT in Wales, each with its own thresholds and first-time buyer relief
- Whether the property is freehold or leasehold, and on a lease, the years remaining, the ground rent and the service charge history
- The EPC, which is required before marketing and increasingly shapes what a lender will lend
- Local authority searches for planning, building control sign-off on any extension, and road adoption
- Flood risk on the Environment Agency map, and whether the property is insurable at a sensible premium
- In Scotland, the Home Report, which the seller must provide and which contains a survey and valuation already
Selling one instead? See where to list a home yourself in the UK , or the full guide to selling without an agent in the UK .
Common questions
Why are private sellers not on Rightmove?
Because Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket accept listings only from estate agents who belong to an approved redress scheme, and a private individual has no scheme membership. It is a rule about complaints handling rather than about the quality of the home.
So how do private sellers end up on Rightmove anyway?
They pay a flat-fee listing service, which is itself a registered agent, somewhere between £99 and £999. The seller still runs the viewings and the negotiation themselves. From the listing you cannot tell, so if the contact goes straight to the owner, treat it as a private sale.
Does buying privately save me money?
Not directly, because the seller pays the agent and UK fees are low to begin with. The seller keeps around £4,500 on a £300,000 home, and whether any of that reaches your price is a matter of negotiation rather than something you can count on.
Do I need a solicitor if there is no estate agent?
Yes, and more than usually. The searches, the title check and the money all run through them, and on a private sale there is nobody else keeping the transaction moving.
What does off-market mean in Britain?
Almost always a home an agent is selling quietly, without advertising it on the portals, rather than one with no agent at all. It is worth registering with local agents if that is what you are after, but it is a different search from looking for owner-sold homes.
Sources
Every legal, tax, and process claim on this page traces to one of these. We re-check them on a schedule and date the page when anything changes.
- The Estate Agents (Redress Scheme) Order 2008legislation.gov.uk · legislation.gov.uk
- Stamp Duty Land Tax rates and reliefsHM Revenue and Customs · gov.uk
- Home Report requirements for sellers in Scotlandmygov.scot · mygov.scot
- Search property information and title recordsHM Land Registry · gov.uk
- Property for sale, site-wide totalRightmove · rightmove.co.uk