Assisted move..what's the catch?? 12 November 2011 at 3:34PM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in House Buying, Renting & Selling 6 replies 14.4K views

Sandpiper143

I am looking to buy a new build and have been offered assisted move whereby Linden homes offer to sell your house for you in a set time frame 6-8 weeks, and take on the estate agents costs. They ask three separate agents to value our current property, I note they also use their own mortgage adviser and legal services.

They say the idea is to get you to buy/move into their new build asap? Anyone done this or know about this?

Many thanks for you help

spenno

Shame you haven't had any replies. Did you go anywhere with this? I'd be interested to know as I am considering the same scheme with Linden.

RedfordML

The 'catch' is the under value the house. We had this agreed with another house builder and came in around £7k less than 'market value'

Good idea in principal and will help many, just may have to take a hit on the house price, unless you can agree 'extra's' on the house you are buying?

silvercar

Downside is that they have you over a barrell as regards the price of the new build, not much room to negotiate extras or price reduction if they are buying yours. Whether the deal stacks up depends on if you think the difference between the price you are paying for the NB and what they are getting for yours is reasonable and if the mortgage valuation of the NB stacks up to get your mortgage.

Dpc_2

I wouldn't agree with the under valuation statement.

What they actually do is ask the agents that go out to give a value that they think they could sell the property in that timescale (ie 6 weeks). When an agent goes out to value for a 12 week plus sole agency agreement they know that sellers are wanting as much as possible so will add on a percentage, hey some one may pay it, if not expect a call to reduce asking price about 6 weeks in.

New homes company will no tie up plot for too long so should get pretty realistic figure, particularly from three different opinions. Do remember that the cost of paying the fees come off the developers bottom line though so you would probably have been able to negotiate the cost off if you were sold. Main benefit from these schemes are locking in a specific plot you want before you find a buyer.

berniexxx

Our experience is that they will get three valuations done and use the average. However what they do is use two high profile estate agents and one obscure agent which no one has ever heard of. The obscure agents evaluation is (surprise surprise) very low which brings the average price down considerably. When I checked the website of the obscure agent they had two properties for sale and the address was some backstreet. Mmmmm.

Max7246

We have just had our property valued by the assisted move people and our property was valued £30k under the market value. We have since spoken to the three agents responsible for the valuation and although they cannot go into detail due to contractual conditions they have all stated that this valuation is nowhere near the valuation they gave. We have now decided to sell through a sold agent although we cannot use any of the ones who previously valued our home as again they would lose 70% of their fee to the Assisted Move people due to the contract they have, this limits us considerably in the town we live in. Not happy at all!