Selling a home by a cash buy site?

AdrianC

scrumpie said:

We have looked into the 'we buy any home' type companies to help sell a property we no longer live in but need to get sold ASAP re finances. Are their any reputable companies out their that will not screw us over. Any help gratefully received.

No.

Pause and think about how their business works.

They buy a house. They resell the house.
They need to pay all their business costs, taxes, staff costs, office costs, SDLT on the purchase, financing costs for the period of ownership, perhaps maintenance costs to make it sellable... and have enough left to make a profit and pay corp tax on that profit... from the gap between the purchase and sale price.

THAT's the "screw you over", that margin between the two.

If you need it gone quickly, auction it. PROPER auction. No reserve. Let the market decide the fair value.

GDB2222

If you do go the auction route, bear in mind that you won’t get a good price. You will still get screwed over, just differently screwed over. There is no way of getting a quick and certain sale at full market value. 

AdrianC

GDB2222 said:

If you do go the auction route, bear in mind that you won’t get a good price. You will still get screwed over, just differently screwed over. There is no way of getting a quick and certain sale at full market value. 

Surely the price at auction is, by definition, the "full market value"...?

GDB2222

AdrianC said:

GDB2222 said:

If you do go the auction route, bear in mind that you won’t get a good price. You will still get screwed over, just differently screwed over. There is no way of getting a quick and certain sale at full market value. 

Surely the price at auction is, by definition, the "full market value"...?

I knew you would say that.

It is the full market value by that method of selling. However, auctions exclude normal end users, as it’s not worth their while to go through the entire legal, finance and survey process ahead of the auction. So, the only buyers are cash buyers, at a reduced price compared to normal marketing.

AnotherJoe

AdrianC said:

GDB2222 said:

If you do go the auction route, bear in mind that you won’t get a good price. You will still get screwed over, just differently screwed over. There is no way of getting a quick and certain sale at full market value. 

Surely the price at auction is, by definition, the "full market value"...?

Its the full market value for circumstances where buyers with mortgages or needing to sell to finance, are excluded.

Which is likely a very large pool of excluded buyers.

 

lesalanos

One downside to auctions is that sales are not guaranteed, as in if people are not interested then it will not reach its reserve price 

NameUnavailable

I got into trouble here for commenting before on house buyer companies so I will be vague. I had to sell, I knew (for a number of reasons) private buyers would be difficult to get over the line so I looked at the other options. Home buyers I contacted quoted figures around £160K. I sold at auction for £230K (it didn't actually make reserve on the day but was sold the week after via a follow up offer). Full market value if there were no issues to contend with would have been about £300K.

GDB2222

NameUnavailable said:

I got into trouble here for commenting before on house buyer companies so I will be vague. I had to sell, I knew (for a number of reasons) private buyers would be difficult to get over the line so I looked at the other options. Home buyers I contacted quoted figures around £160K. I sold at auction for £230K (it didn't actually make reserve on the day but was sold the week after via a follow up offer). Full market value if there were no issues to contend with would have been about £300K.

That sort of looks like what you should expect. I’m not sure what the issues were and how easily they could be dealt with, but the £300k figure is purely notional given that the issues were still there. So, the real market value was around the £230k mark, and the quick buy companies offered 75% of that. 

The quick buy company offers liquidity but they have to resell the property, so they are bound to offer quite a low figure. Quite frankly, unless you need the money in a fortnight, I cannot see why anyone would use them.