any of the 'cash for your home' companies any good

CHR15

I went for a few viewings in Southmead, Bristol. Fantastic 3 bed semi, brand new everything, kitchen, bathroom etc. Garden looked like it had been cut with scissors.

House was up for £139,950

Two doors away was boarded up, burnt out motorbike & wheelie bin outside front garden, driving through the roads I could see smashed windows, rusty corrugated iron Porches!! ha!.....

Even the dogs wore stab vests!!

I feel so sorry for the sellers and can sympathise entirely, wild stallions wouldnt make me buy there even if the price was dropped to £50k

I can totally see your joy at getting out of the prison sentence you were in but macaque does have a point

Mrs7ones

no, we didn't test out the market at £60k - but it really would have been irrelevant - we had 'people' knocking on our door wanting to purchase drugs (it was next door that was the dealer's house) - jesus, can you imagin that happening when there was a vewing in progress......
I stand by my actions of selling low ans fast!

macaque_2

Mrs7ones wrote: »

no, we didn't test out the market at £60k - but it really would have been irrelevant - we had 'people' knocking on our door wanting to purchase drugs (it was next door that was the dealer's house) - jesus, can you imagin that happening when there was a vewing in progress......
I stand by my actions of selling low ans fast!

Don't get me wrong. I am not questioning your decision to sell quickly. My concern was that you seemed to endorsing a scheme which is clearly poor value for money. Although they may have a purpose in the greater scheme of things, home buying companies are very much a last resort.

You sold your house to a bunch of sharks for a song. In my view, the greater good would have been better served if you had sold it to a private buyer for £61,000. You would have certainly made a first time buyer happy.

eek

macaque wrote: »

So there we have it. By your own admission, you sold the house for 20% less than your lowest advertised price. You never even tested the market at £60K. All this talk about bad areas (which it may well be) is irrelevant and nothing more than a flimsy rationalisation.

Advertised price != sold price. Its a choice of £60k living somewhere nice or £0k living in a hell hole.

You sold your house to a bunch of sharks for a song. In my view, the greater good would have been better served if you had sold it to a private buyer for £61,000. You would have certainly made a first time buyer happy.

But those sharks in these circumstances have come unstuck. Furthermore by not selling to a FTB if the place is as bad as has been described I think selling to an idiotic shark is the greater good. Only if they find a greater fool to buy it would I possibly change my opinion.

Remember not all circumstances are the same and not all locations are the same.

EdInvestor

macaque wrote: »

'Cash for your home' companies make difficult decisions on your behalf and at your expense. They offer you a price that covers two transaction charges plus their profit. A home seller would have to be barking mad to do this in anything but exceptional circumstances.

Agreed, but seems to me that Mrs7ones's situation counts as exceptional circumstances, particularly given the amounts involved.

macaque_2

eek wrote: »

Advertised price != sold price. Its a choice of £60k living somewhere nice or £0k living in a hell hole.

But those sharks in these circumstances have come unstuck. Furthermore by not selling to a FTB if the place is as bad as has been described I think selling to an idiotic shark is the greater good. Only if they find a greater fool to buy it would I possibly change my opinion.

Remember not all circumstances are the same and not all locations are the same.

No rational home buying company would have kept it on the market for 3 years. That is just Mrs7ones trying to rationalise her decision. If it is indeed the same company who are selling it today, then they will have been renting it out in the interim. If they only paid £60K and have collected 3 years rent, they are not going to lose.

Fergie73

No rational home buying company would have kept it on the market for 3 years.

The trouble is, we're no longer in a rational market. Very little going on right now is rational. Somewhere, on some balance sheet (or probably several balance sheets) that company's £60,000 debt to buy the house will be listed as an investment asset, and somewhere else, the house will be listed as a £60,000 collateral asset. In financial terms, this adds up and balances and the world is good.

It's only when a profit or loss has to be taken (ie, the house is actually sold) that anyone sees if there's a problem or whether the companies in question have made good decisions. If they paid £60,000 for the house, and they can't get that on the open market, it's completely rational (in those straight, financial and accounting terms) to keep it on the books as a £60,000 asset rather than take the loss. They will no doubt be working on the assumption that prices always rise and if they sit on it long enough, they'll get a profit from it. (Or if they don't, they'll get enough from other "investments" to cover it).

This works until they suddenly can't pay their debts, or have a liquidity crisis, or their lenders foreclose on them, at which point the assets have to be liquidated, and then we see whether there's a large loss or a profit.

I tend to agree that, if prices were to continue rising, it would be better for people who want a quick sale to drop the price to the level the sharks are asking and put it on the open market at that, giving someone the opportunity to actually buy a home, rather than letting the sharks buy then just leave it like that. On the other hand, if the estate is as bad as the seller says, the sharks deserve it...