3% commission charged by some High Street agents

A new league table of High Street agents’ charges published over the weekend reveals the locations where agents charge an average of over three per cent.

Comparison website GetAgent has made the analysis for the consumer organisation Which? and has analysed more than 40,000 branches that listed properties in over 2,400 areas.

It included the fees levied by agents offering a no-sale, no fee service across England and Wales in the past six months - online agents, including of course those who charge up-front, were not included in the exercise.

GetAgent found the average estate agent fee for selling a home in England and Wales is 1.53 per cent including VAT but it can soar to 3.07 per cent on average - and not necessarily just in the most expensive areas of London as one might expect.

It found that for sellers in the CT11 area of Ramsgate in Kent, the typical fee charged by local agents is 3.07 per cent, or £7,425 based on the average property listing price of £241,849 for branches in the area.

In contrast, sellers in NE67 - which is Benthall in Northumberland - typically get charged a 0.85 per cent fee. That equates to £2,771 for an average property worth £326,000 listed with branches in the area.

GetAgent’s 1.53 per cent including VAT average across the whole of the country compares with an average of 1.2 per cent including VAT put forward earlier this year by house moving company Reallymoving.

And in December last year another comparison service, Netanagent, gave different figures again: it suggest that London had the highest High Street estate agent fees in the country at 1.70 per cent on average, some 0.6 per cent above the national norm of just 1.1 per cent.

You can see the new GetAgent league table here - it’s very long and relatively slow to access but does carry an exhaustive selection of charges by postcode, and typical property costs for the area.