Experience with house purchasing companies?

bazzabear

I wonder if anyone has used, or at least got a quote, from one of these companies?

I can only assume that their business model is to offer a percentage of the valuation and then sell on at full price. But how much do they knock off?

kingstreet

You will usually be offered about 70% to 75% and some of the less scrupulous ones will gazunder you for another £5k to £10k a couple of days before you were to exchange contracts just when you are committed to your future plans.

Be careful.

eddddy

Many companies describe themselves at "house buying companies", but when you dig a bit deeper, they are really just estate agents who specialise in persuading people to sell their houses cheaply.


But assuming you find a real house buying company, and if you have a house that's sticking on the market at, say, £120k...

... the house buying company might say it's really only worth £100k...

... so they might offer £75k.

But you would probably get a really fast sale if you just offered it at £85k through a 'standard' EA.

davidmcn

Or put it into auction, where the price might not be what you'd get with a lengthy marketing period through an EA, but it's at least been advertised, with potential for competitive bidding, contracts are exchanged instantly and it's all completed within a month.

Madmel

We are selling late MiL's retirement flat. We owned it, so no need for probate. Eventually found a buyer (very long process), and she was selling to a BTL, so a chain of 3 with 2 properties. Ready to exchange when she lost her buyers, but still wanted our flat. We gave the EA a good prod to push things forward as they offer a part-exchange service. They reckoned it would take them 6 weeks for it to go through; that was towards the end of September. We still haven't exchanged, our solicitor is completely fed up with the messing around and it is now more than 11 weeks since we started a supposed 6 week process.

I wouldn't believe much of what they said and am not at all impressed by the process I have experienced.