Researching the ‘we buy any house’ market can feel like swimming into shark infested waters. On the surface all seems calm but underneath shady figures loom waiting for the first signs of blood. Entering into this market can be scary because of the fear of the unknown, we all know how a traditional house sale works but selling your house to a company is unfamiliar and seems a little odd.
But have no fear, if you know the warning signs to look out for and you are forearmed with the information provided in this article you can navigate your way through these treacherous waters unscathed and have a successful cash house sale at the end of it.
Read on to learn everything you need when dealing with ‘we buy any house’ companies.
The term ‘we buy any house’ is synonymous with the ‘quick sale’ or ‘cash house buying’ and as such this review is not for one specific company but a guide for people looking to navigate this tricky market. Trying to find a good ‘we buy any house’ company can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. We know, we have personally mystery shopped dozens of them and this review is the result of all of our findings.
What is a ‘we buy any house’ company?
Let’s start at the beginning, what actually is a ‘we buy any house’ company to begin with. Also known as ‘quick sale’ or ‘cash buying companies’ these are commercial entities set up to purchase houses directly from sellers, bypassing the traditional ‘open market’ sale. In order to do this, and make money, these companies need to purchase properties at a below market price but they offer value to sellers in other areas, the main one being speed.
A traditional house sale can be an arduous process taking many months to complete. The property needs to be marketed, viewings need to be carried out, offers negotiated and then even after a sale is agreed the legal process for buying a property, commonly known as conveyancing, can take many months.
Using a we buy any house company can expedite this process, there is no need to market the property and no viewings required, they will simply carry out their own valuation of your property and make you an offer. If you accept they use specialist conveyancers and take out indemnity insurance to dramatically reduce the conveyancing time. All of this means that they can purchase a property in a matter of weeks, not months. This is very appealing to sellers that have time constraints on their sale.
Apart from the speed, the other main advantage of a ‘we buy any house’ company is, as the name suggests, that they will purchase any property regardless of condition or circumstances. Which is ideal if you need to sell your property ‘as is’. A buyer looking to for a new home to live in generally wants the property to be in good condition and finished to a high standard. This is not the case with ‘we buy any house’ companies. They will overlook any cosmetic issues that the property might have and some companies will even purchase properties with major defects such as subsidence. They are in a position to do this because they don’t use a traditional mortgage to fund the purchase meaning that they can bypass any constraints that mortgage lenders have on their lending criteria, for example banks and building societies won’t lend on properties with structural defects or if a property is uninhabitable as the risk that they won’t get their money back is too great. We buy any house companies either purchase with their own cash funds or have facilities in place with funds or financial institutions that aren’t constrained by such rules.
So now we have a better understanding of what a ‘we buy any house’ company actually is. Let’s see how selling to them compares to a traditional house sale.
We buy any house vs a traditional house sale – the pros and cons
As mentioned above, there are two big differences between selling your house to a we buy any house company vs a traditional house sale via an estate agent are speed, the average sale time selling through an estate agent can be anywhere from 3 to 6 months and even longer if there are any issues with the property, or the buyers. The average sale time with a we buy any house company is around 1 month but can be even quicker if required.
There are other advantages too. Selling through an estate agent means, photos and public viewings meaning that anyone and everyone can see that you are selling your house and can have a good snoop around in your business. If you are selling to a company the only people that need to know are you, them and the solicitors meaning that the sale is completely private.
Another advantage is the certainty that it provides, once you have accepted their formal offer you know how much you are getting for your property and that won’t change unless something major comes up during the sales process that was previously unknown (like undeclared structural issues for example). In a traditional sale you don’t know what you are going to get offered by open market buyers, it could be the asking price but it could be far less and if the agent has overvalued your property to win the listing you could be in for a nasty surprise. With a guaranteed offer from a company you can plan your next move accordingly.
Something else to consider is the fact that a ‘we buy any house’ service has no upfront costs or any fees to pay at all. Most reputable companies will even pay your legal fees as well meaning the whole process is cost free. A typical estate agent fee will be around 2 – 3% of the sale price and legal fees can set you back anywhere between £500 – £1500. Also when you factor in any cosmetic work or repairs to the property to make it saleable you could have to spend thousands even before your property is sold, this money can stay firmly in your pocket if selling to a company.
Of course all of these advantages only really mean anything if you choose a reputable house buying company to purchase your property. Which brings us to our first disadvantage of selling to a ‘we buy any house’ company, the industry’s reputation. The ‘we buy any house’ industry has a bad reputation and it is well deserved for the most part, you hear horror stories of buyers being strung along for months only for the offer to be dropped by tens of thousands on the day the sale is due to complete. With this said there are a handful of companies out there that do deliver on their promises and offer a valuable service to homeowners, doing your due diligence is the key to finding the right company for you, don’t let this put you off, if you follow the principles given in the rest of this guide you can easily avoid the bad apples.
The other major disadvantage to a ‘we buy any house’ sale is the amount of money that you will get for your property. Genuine house buying companies make their money by buying at a discount and reselling the property at full price. After factoring in all of the overheads involved in purchasing a property; legal fees, finance costs, holding costs, admin costs etc. Companies need to purchase properties at about 80% of what the property will eventually sell for on the open market so if you need more than that amount then this isn’t a viable option.
Why would you use a ‘we buy any house’ company?
Now that you know more about ‘we buy any house’ companies you might be thinking is this the right route for me, here is a list of some of the main reasons people turn to ‘we buy any house’ companies;
Need a faster than normal house sale
Need to sell ‘as is’
Property has mortgage-ability issues
Selling a tenanted property
Selling an empty property
Selling an uninhabitable property
Need a private house sale
House is being repossessed
Moving for work
Emigrating
Selling a second home
House needs renovations
House needs repair work
Selling inherited property
Leasehold issues
Problem neighbours
Property has a mineshaft on the boundary
Property has a non compliant septic tank
The process of selling to a we buy any house company
Although there are slight variations in the process from company to company the process is more or less the same for all ‘we buy any house’ companies and follows the following timeline. We will now outline the basic steps and provide you with information on how you can best approach each one.
‘We buy any house’ Enquiry
The first step with all of the companies is to make an initial enquiry. Each company usually has several ways that you can contact them;
Phone number – this is usually the most direct route and means you can speak to someone from the company straight away. Some companies do use phone answering services however so the operator may just take your details and then get someone from the company to call you back. The phone number for the company will generally appear prominently on the website either at the top of every page or on a ‘contact us’ page. You might also see local newspaper ads for house buying companies but we would advise that you spend some time doing some research on the company first rather than calling them directly from an ad and regretting it later.
Contact form – most ‘we buy any house’ websites will have some sort of contact form on them, usually they ask for a few basic contact details like name, address, email number or phone number but some can be more complex and ask questions about your property to give the company a better understanding of the situation before they speak to you. Be aware that response times can vary quite dramatically from company to company ranging from a few minutes for the best and never for the worst.
Email – the majority of companies will provide an email address that you can reach out to. As with the contact form the response times can vary though.
We would recommend calling the company directly, this way you will get an immediate response making it the most efficient contact method and you get to speak to them in your own time rather than waiting for them to contact you. If you are not in a position to speak at the time of enquiry some companies do give you the option to schedule an appointment at a later date which is also a good option but if you are looking to make an enquiry it is worth having some time put aside in your day.
We buy any house First Contact
For all of the enquiry methods the result is universally the same, you will have an initial telephone conversation with a representative of the company that you have chosen. There is a difference however in who you will speak to and how the conversation will go but they will generally go one of 2 ways;
The screening call; some companies, often the ones that are doing a lot of top level marketing such as leaflet drops or TV advertisements will favour an initial screening call. In this type of call you are speaking to essentially a call handler, it is their job to get some information from you, tell you about how the company works and give you some expectations on what to expect in regards to an offer. This will be in the form of a percentage rather than an actual figure and the idea at this stage is for the company to weed out the tire kickers that have no real intention but are just curious to know how much they might get. In this scenario the person you are speaking to is generally working from a script and due to high call volumes, and potentially targets, they tend to move at a brisk pace meaning that it will be a very short call, usually less than 10 minutes. You can ask them some questions but be prepared for them to not know the answers to even some fairly basic ones. Towards the end of this type of call you will always be asked if you are still interested in proceeding and if you are a second call will be booked for you to speak to someone from their sales team, the actual job title can vary from acquisitions manager to valuer but they are essentially all doing the same thing.
The valuation call; The other type of call that may happen, and the more productive one from a seller’s perspective, is a call with a more knowledgeable representative of the company. Again they could be called a valuer, a sales manager, an acquisition manager or even a director of the company depending on the size of the operation but the key point is that they will have good knowledge of the property market and will be more involved in the process of purchasing your house. This call will start in a similar way to the screening call, they will ask you questions about the property and circumstances of the sale but the key difference here is that they will actually carry out a quick valuation of your property while you are on the call. It is important to take the actual figure with a pinch of salt at this stage but what they are doing is using property research tools to look at your local market, previous sold prices of your property and surrounding properties to come up with a rough estimate, which will be accurate to a certain degree but is not likely to be the final valuation figure. After they have done this they will give you an estimated offer based on this figure, don’t get too excited at this stage this is not guaranteed in any way at this stage but will give you an indication of what an offer might look like. It is worth having your calculator with you at this stage and write down not only the offer figure but also what they are valuing your house at with these two numbers you can work out the percentage of your properties value they are offering. If the percentage is too high or too low then you know it is probably bogus, more on this later.
At this stage of the call you will be asked if the offer could work for you, if you say yes then you will move onto the next stage which is a formal valuation.
Before we get to that here are some common questions that are asked on the first call;
Number of bedrooms.
Number of bathrooms.
General condition of the property.
Features of the property (driveway, garden etc).
How old is the boiler.
When were the bathrooms and kitchen last updated.
Does it have double glazing.
Current situation (occupied, vacant, tenanted).
Circumstances around the sale (why are you selling it).
Are there any known major issues with the property.
We buy any house valuation
If you are interested in the offer that they have given you over the phone then the next step is the valuation process. Each cash buying company will have a slightly different procedure for valuing a property. Perhaps the most common method is for the house buying company to get at least 2 local estate agents to come around to your property independently, they might take some photos of the condition of the property and then they will carry out a valuation as if they were going to be selling your house the difference with this however that they will not be sending you the valuation report, instead they will be sending it directly to the house buying company who will then combine this with their own valuation work from an internal valuer or underwriter. The company will then take an average of all of the valuations and use that as the ‘full market value’ of your house from which they will base their offer.
Some house buying companies will cut the estate agent valuations out altogether and use a combination of software and internal valuers to determine an offer. If this is the case they will usually ask you to take pictures of the property and maybe even a short walk through video, all of which can be taken on a smartphone.
The third most common method is for a company to send out a valuer to your property who will essentially carry out the work of an estate agent, taking photos and determining the value themselves. This is perhaps the least favourable method from a sellers point of view, not due to the accuracy of the valuation but because you are letting the fox into the hen house. Generally speaking the companies that use this method are the ones that have the more questionable and least desirable practices. For example companies that use this method will often try to switch you from a cash sale to an ‘investor sale’ usually following a lower than expected cash offer. Companies that do this will also more than likely ask you to sign a contract, something that you want to avoid at all costs (more on this later) and with them sitting in your living room the potential for pressure selling is far greater.
Once the house buying company has completed their valuation they will come back to you with a ‘formal offer’ it is at this stage that you need to seriously consider if you can work with the offer. As a simple rule of thumb an offer from a house buying company is going to be around 80% of the ‘full market value’ of your property, the main reasons for this is economical, the company needs to make a profit and with all of the costs involved in buying and selling property plus the other expenses of running a company around 80% is where the offer needs to be in order for it to make sense.
If a company is offering you significantly more than this, you need to ask yourself how they can do that. Either they are not buying your property themselves and are acting as a broker (or simply an expensive estate agent) or they have no intention of paying the offered amount, more on this later.
The opposite is also possible, a company can offer you significantly less than 80%. In this instance they are usually trying to push you towards another service that they offer, such as an estate agency service or an ‘investor’ sale. Be cautious of both of these options as they generally promise a lot but deliver little more than you can achieve on the open market.
Can the formal offer from a cash buying company change?
A point worth noting is that once you have a formal offer from a reputable cash buying company then it is unlikely to change.
The only reason that it would is if new information comes to light further down along in the process, such as after a survey is carried out. Even then the offer would only be revised if a major structural defect or other condition that may affect the mortgageability of the property, that had not been previously stated, comes to light.
This is why to avoid any surprises further down the line it is important to tell the warts and all truth about your property up front. You will not be able to hide anything from cash buying companies, they purchase properties on a daily basis and have protocols in place to protect themselves from significant financial risks so they will always uncover any nasty surprises before the sale goes through. With this in mind always disclose all of the information that you are aware of when initially speaking to a house buying company.
Should you sign a contract with a ‘we buy any house’ company?
Something that some cash buying companies will do after formalising an offer is to send a contract over for you to sign, if you have never sold your house to a company before you may be forgiven for believing that this is just standard industry practice, this however is not the case.
The trouble with these contracts is that they are only in favour of the company and not you as the seller. For example they have clauses in them which means that you cannot pull out of the sale during the contract period without incurring a financial penalty, which is often up to £1000 that you have to pay the company even if they have done absolutely nothing towards buying your house.
There are a lot of things wrong with these contracts but the main one being the length of the contract, they are often valid for 6 months or more, a bit strange considering that you are likely looking for a fast house sale, the reason you chose to sell to a company in the first place.
Another big issue is that although you can’t back out the company can. There is usually a clause in the contract that means they can change their offer at any point, for any reason and the contract is then null and void. Ok, if that is the case you can walk away without having to pay the penalty fees but that is no use to you if it happens months after the sale was initially due to complete or even worse, and unfortunately more common, if they lower their offer on the day the sale is due to complete and you have already made on going plans and all of your possessions are in boxes.
So signing a contract with a house buying company only gives them the power to mess you around and not deliver what they have promised, not really the point of a contract, that is why we advise that you never sign one.
If you are unsure about any of the terms of a contract always consult a legal advisor before signing.
We buy any house Conveyancing
If you do accept the formal offer of a cash house buying company the next step is exactly the same as a traditional house sale, only it can happen a lot faster.
The first thing the company will do is ask you to instruct a solicitor, they will already have their own that they use for all of their purchases so is used to completing fast. Often a company will offer a panel of solicitors for you to choose from if you do not already have your own.
Should you choose a solicitor from a house buyers panel?
These solicitors are independent from the company but will be versed in how the company works and will likely be familiar with the fast house sale process that the companies use so it is not a bad idea to choose one, all of the work can be carried out either digitally or via post so there is no real need for your solicitors to be local, although if you feel more comfortable meeting with someone in person then go for a firm that is local to you.
Another reason that choosing from the panel is that the company will cover 100% of your legal costs for the sale. When you are dealing with a ‘we buy any house’ company you should always ask them their position on paying legal fees, most will say on the website that they cover your fees but there are usually some caveats like only paying up to a certain amount, such as £1000, and if the fees are any more you will have to pay the difference so make sure you know that information and the solicitors costs upfront before making your decision on which solicitor to choose.
A big red flag (more of those in the next section) is if a company appoints you a solicitor without giving you any option to choose your own. If this is the case you should walk away from the sale, a solicitor should be independent of the company since they should only have an interest in representing you as their client.
Once solicitors have been appointed a memorandum of sale will be issued and the company will likely arrange for a survey to be carried out at the property.
Why do cash house buying companies need a survey?
Almost all house buying companies will get a survey carried out on your property. This will not be a full structural survey but a house buyers report similar to that of a mortgage lender. This is to check that the condition of the property is as previously stated and to deem if the property is mortgageable, unless mortgage-ability issues have been previously stated.
This is to cover a company from a liability standpoint and is part of their due diligence process, sometimes it is a stipulation of their funding facility and in any case it is just good practice. They don’t want to purchase a property only to find out that it has subsidence after they have purchased it. House buying companies are essentially asset management companies so they need to have a clear understanding that the asset they are purchasing is what they are expecting.
This survey is not to pick tiny holes in the property such as shabby carpets or outdated kitchens which an open market buyer might use to renegotiate a price. It is to find any issues that might substantially affect the value of a property from a resale point of view, such as;
Subsidence
Major structural damage
Invasive garden species
Spray foam insulation
Mineshafts in the boundary
If the property has no issues that have not been previously stated then the survey is just a formality.
After the survey, the conveyancing process will continue, house buying companies can speed up this process by taking out indemnity policies on anything that would usually take a significant amount of time. A completion date will be set and that is the day that the sale will take place and the money will be transferred into your bank account.
In normal circumstances a house buying company can complete this process in around 3 weeks but it can be longer if you need. In certain circumstances such as if a company is repairing a broken chain due to a sale that has fallen through it can be quicker since the majority of the work has been done and they can just pick up where it had been left off.
Red flags you should be looking out for when dealing with a We Buy Any House company
In any industry there are companies that you want to avoid but unfortunately the ‘we buy any house’ industry is rife with companies that are happy to take you for a ride for the potential to make a substantial profit. These companies don’t really care if you get the service that you need or were promised.
Fortunately these rotten apples are fairly easy to spot if you know what you are looking for, these are some questions you should be asking yourself to spot the red flags that mean you might want to think twice before entrusting the sale of your biggest asset to them.
Are you dealing with a legitimate company?
This is a fairly basic question that you should ask yourself before using the services of any company but in the case of cash house buyers you want to look out for signs that they are not genuine cash buyers.
A simple question to ask yourself is if the offer you have been presented with sounds too good. If you thought your house was worth £200,000 and they are offering you very close to that or even more then you should approach with caution, overvaluing your property to flatter you and get you to sign up is a common tactic amongst the shady players. Any company offering you more than 80% of a reasonable valuation amount needs to be questioned.
Are they asking you to sign a contract?
Perhaps the biggest red flag is if a company is asking you to sign a contract. There is no place for a contract in the cash house buying process, they are always one sided and effectively give the company free reign to mess you around and there is nothing you can do about it.
Can you use your own solicitor?
Another major red flag is if a company wants you to use a solicitor appointed by them, giving you no option to choose your own. A solicitor should be there to represent you and not the interests of the company buying your house. If the company remains steadfast on this you have to question the reason why.
If you ask yourself these questions and spot any of these red flags you will be able to protect yourself against receiving poor service and at the end of the day being ripped off.
If you’ve gotten this far you are probably pretty sure that a cash buying company is the right solution for you and you just have one question left to answer, which company should you choose? After all you can’t call every single company and whittle them down one by one by spotting the red flags, take it from us that would take you a very long time.
Luckily there are some things that you can look out for from the start to narrow down you choices.
Memberships
Something that you can look out for which is fairly easy to spot are certain memberships that reputable cash house buying companies will be apart of.
The main one to look for is if they are registered with the property ombudsman (TPOS). The property ombudsman is a not-for-profit government approved scheme providing dispute resolution in the property sector. If a company is a registered member this means that they have signed up to the terms of the ombudsman and if they fall short on their service you have a route to access redress.
You can find out if a company is a registered member of the property ombudsman here.
Always check with the official website to see if a company is a member, don’t take seeing the logo on the website as a sure sign that a company is actually registered.
Another membership to look for is the National Association of Property Buyers (NAPB). This is a self-governing body for cash house buyers set up in reaction to a government report into some of the worst practices in the industry. Although it has its shortcomings, members need to be registered with the property ombudsman and have to sign up to a code of ethics, although weather this is actually being enforced is another question.
Another thing you can research to give you an idea of how a company treats its customers is a company’s reviews.
Finding we buy any house reviews
There 2 different types of sources of company reviews that you can readily find online.
Independent customer review sites
The majority of companies will have customer reviews on independent review sites such as trustpilot or feefo. Google reviews are another potential source of genuine customer reviews. It is worth bearing in mind however that some of these review sites are actually platforms that offer subscriptions to members, giving them the opportunity to send links out to customers. If a company has such a membership, usually signified by having a significant number of reviews, then they are unlikely to send links to customers that have had a bad experience.
Another thing to look out for with this is companies that just send review links after first calls, perhaps they did have a good first impression but this is no indicator that they would have had a good experience of they actually sold their house to them.
As with anything an amount of good common sense is required when determining the value of such reviews.
Review ‘tricks’ to look out for
As with everything in the quick house sale industry the bad operators in the market have developed sophisticated tactics to mitigate their bad reviews and protect their reputation.
One of the most used is the ‘first call’ review, this is a method of boosting good reviews by asking ‘customers’ to review them after initial contact with the company. These are usually not even customers at all but just people making an inquiry, any company can make a good impression on a first call, especially if they offer advice, rule their service out as an option because it doesn’t work for them and send them on their way with a smile.
It is very difficult for anyone in this situation to give a bad review so the positive review numbers get a big boost drowning out the negative ones. If you are aware of this it is fairly simple to spot you will often see short vague reviews mentioning ‘good advice’ or a pleasant phone call. These reviews can be largely ignored.
Another tactic is to aggressively attempt to get the reviews removed. There are a multitude of ways that a company will try to do this ranging from the cunning use of review platforms terms (for example many review platforms will not allow personal names to be used in reviews so the companies encourage reviewers to name the staff that they dealt with so they can appeal to the review platform and get them removed) to down right bribery.
It isn’t unknown for companies to pay people hundreds of pounds to remove their bad reviews (which is in direct breach of the review platforms terms). These tactics are harder to spot but it is still possible, for example Trustpilot provides statistics on the number of reviews that a company has had or has attempted to have removed, if you can see a high number of reviews being removed you know the company is trying hard to cover their tracks.
Some customers can’t be swayed even by the offer of hard cash to remove their reviews and will often update their review to mention the attempted bribe – if you can see evidence of this you need to consider if you want to use a company that would employ such immoral ploys.
With this in mind here is a list of the most commonly searched reviews and a link to the corresponding trustpilot review page;
Over the last couple of years several cash buyer review websites have sprung up. These websites review various companies in the industry and generally give them a score. Some of these websites are completely genuine independent sites but some have an agender. For example one of them states clearly on the website that it is “exclusively leased” by a well known house buying company which puts its motives and independence into question. Again it is worth not taking these reviews at face value and carrying out some due diligence on which ones you trust.
Things you should do before calling a we buy any house company – Our top tips for success
Before you embark on your journey into the cash sale market there are certain things you can do to make the process as smooth as possible, these include;
Do your due diligence
Since you are here reading this you already have a head start in this.
Find a solicitor
If you want to be really efficient you could already have a solicitor lined up, it is important to find a solicitor that is used to fast sales. For more information on how to find the right solicitor for you house sale you can read our article here.
Have your house valued
To get one step ahead of the game you could get your house valued. This way you will not only know what an offer from a cash buyer will likely be but you will also not be at the mercy of the company’s own valuation. If you do want to go down this route however it isn’t just a case of finding a local agent and asking them what they think your house is worth. You could do this but you are likely to get an inflated number so they can win the listing. Instead you need to get the opinion of 2 to 3 agents and ask them for what they think the property would need to be priced at to sell within 6 months. Once you have these 3 values you should take the average and that will give you a better indication of value than just the views of one agent.
Know what an offer should look like
If you are armed with the knowledge of what region a cash offer for your property should be in then you are better prepared to deal with over or under offers. You will also have a better understanding of if this market is right for you or not, which could save you a great deal of time in the first place.
If you want to know what a cash offer for your property might look like you can use our cash offer calculator tool below.
Get An Estimated Cash Offer With Our Free Calculator
Answer a few simple questions to find out what a cash offer from a genuine buyer might look like.
