They may have the same name as a line of M&S activity wear but do Good Move deliver a well tailored house buying service to their clients?
The guru cast his expert eye at this well known player in the quick house sale industry so you can arm yourself with the facts before you make any big decisions.
Read on to discover what he found.
Our reviews are a combination of first hand experience and thorough investigation. We make a genuine enquiry with the company and follow their process up until the point that we can no longer proceed (we can’t actually sell a house unfortunately) which we call our “mystery shop”.
We also thoroughly research the company using publicly available data from multiple sources such as the companies website through to companies house and land registry.
We then use this information to rate the company using our own criteria, based on what we believe should be the gold standard of cash house buyer services. The results against this criteria are reflected in the score that you will find on this page which is out of a maximum of 100%.
The guru has painstakingly reviewed and analysed the house buying companies in the UK, assessing them against his strict best practice criteria.
In short the hard work has been done for you, if you want a no obligations cash offer from a genuine cash house buying company with best in class service use the guru recommended service below to be matched with the right buyer for you, your house sale could be just a few clicks away.
Not sure if a cash offer will work for you? Find out what you could get in under a minute without having to enter any contact details.
Are they a genuine house buying company?
Is their offer realistic?
No contract or tie in to sign?
Can you use your own solicitor?
No fees to pay?
Are they registered with a redress scheme?
We made an enquiry on the company’s website and waited for a callback so we can rate both the speed of the response and the quality of the information and service provided.
Good Move have several ways that you can contact them via the website. You can enter your postcode via their “enter your postcode for a free cash offer” bar that is found on most pages of the website. You can call them directly on a freephone number which claims to be available 24/7. There is also a local number that you can call them on found on the homepage (this is a 0113 number as they are based in leeds). You can request a call back which opens a form for you to enter your contact details or they provide an email address (they also provide an address that you can write to them on but who does that?).
I used the “enter your postcode for a free cash offer” bar as this is the method used for all of the reviews. I entered my postcode and hit the big green “go!” button. You are then taken to a page where you have to choose your address from a dropdown, based on the postcode you have entered, and then provide your contact details; name, email address and phone number which are all required fields. There is then a box to tick to say that you agree to “the terms of data collection” which you can find if you scroll down to the footer of the website under the “T&C’s” section.
Once I did this I hit the “Request Free Cash Offer” button and was directed to a page that said my enquiry had been submitted and to expect a callback.
There is a lot of mention on the website of “our qualified chartered surveyors” and above the enquiry form and after you submit it they imply that you will get a call from a qualified chartered surveyor however as I will go onto in the next section this is not the case.
I received a call back from a Good Move agent 30 minutes after I left the enquiry. After exchanging pleasantries they asked me if I would be interested in getting a cash offer for my house (that’s kinda why I enquired) then asked me if the property was currently on the market.
It then went silent as the agent went to “pull up some details for you” and then after around 10 seconds of silence they told me that they had found the property (that was a relief) and then went on to ask me some details about the property, number of bedrooms, how long I had owned it and asked some questions about the circumstances and why I am looking to sell the property.
Then they went on to explain that he could offer on my property and that as a company they have several different options depending on the timeframes that I would be looking to sell the house in. They then went on to explain that the price I would receive from them would be lower than I would get through an estate agent but there would be less hassle and it would be much quicker. They then went on to say that through an estate agent it could take 6 months but a cash sale to them would take around 2 weeks and a sale to one of their “investors” would take about 6-8 weeks.
Interestingly the “investor” option was not mentioned again during the call, perhaps because I seemed quite keen on the quick sale offer so they didn’t want to push me to a potentially less profitable service. There should be a cautious approach taken to anyone saying that they have investors waiting to buy your property, in reality this is very rarely the case and most of the time you end up signing was is known as an “option agreement” which ties you in to the “buyer” who are then going to try to sell your property for a higher price than you agreed with them on the open market. If they do find a buyer within the duration of the contract (which can be up to 6 month or more, at least twice the length of a traditional estate agent contract) they sell to them at a higher price and pocket the difference without barely having to lift a finger.
This is tactic 2 on our common cash house buyer scams article which you can read here.
They then went on to ask me ‘what it is like inside’ and the condition of the property and asked me if there was any debts secured against the property.
The timing of this seemed odd as these questions could have been asked when he was asking me about the property earlier but hey ho.
They then asked me what I thought the property was worth and spoke about recent sold prices in the area and went on to explain that if they are purchasing the property they generally look to pay around 20% less than what a property is worth (that’s 80% of it’s value then) and then gave me an estimated offer for the property.
They then went on to explain that there would be no fees to pay and they would provide a solicitor for me and cover the fees and that they also needed to get a surveyor out to value the property but there was no cost or obligation for this and if I wanted to walk away then there would be nothing to pay. They explained that they use a local independent RICs surveyor who would come out, do an inspection and provide a valuation which they could show me. If the offer was not acceptable after the survey then I am free to walk away with no cost or obligation.
When I asked if I can use my own solicitor they explained that I can but that they couldn’t cover the costs entirely, they have around 3 – 4 solicitors that they could provide where the costs would be covered but if I wanted to use my own they would only pay up to £500 which is coverable on completion.
They then confirmed that once the surveyor had been out and confirmed the valuation any offer that they make from that would be guaranteed but there is no contract that I needed to sign.
They then confirmed that they are the one that buy the property but when asked what they did with the property after they had bought it the agent wasn’t so sure because that wasn’t their department’ although he could hazard a guess that they either rented them out or sold them for a profit.
I then asked the million dollar question, were they a chartered surveyor like it had stated on the website but alas no they weren’t but one of the directors probably was.
This is a bit disappointing given that they make such a big point about this on the website.
They then agreed to email me the offer over and follow up if we were interested.
The Good Move sales process is fairly straightforward, you make an enquiry, they tell you an “initial offer” on the phone and if you are interested you then go to the next step which is the valuation.
The Goodmove valuation process, from what they described, is a 2 step process.
Step 1: They carry out a rough desktop valuation over the phone on your initial call with them. They check recent sold prices in your area, ask some questions about the type and condition of the property and then give you a figure of what they deem your house to be worth which is what they base the initial offer on.
Step 2: If you are interested in the initial offer the next stage is for them to get a local RICs surveyor to inspect the property and value it. This figure is then used to provide you with a “final offer”.
This was based in the information provided to me over the phone on the initial call however this does contradict the information on their website which states;
“If this is accepted the property buyer team will then instruct our Asset Management Company to arrange a valuation of your property. As part of the due diligence process, Good Move will instruct two valuations for your property.”
Which suggests more of a standard cash house buyer valuation model where they get local estate agents to come and value your home. So either the information provided on the call was incorrect or they have updated their practices and have not updated their website.
What Percentage Do Good Move Offer
The Good Move initial offer is 80% of what they deem the property to be worth after carrying out their desktop valuation.
Apart from the initial call the agent did agree to send me over an email confirming their initial offer which they did.
Here we ask our 4 key questions that you should always ask yourself when dealing with a cash house buying company.
Yes. Good Move have been trading for almost a decade and have a turnover in excess of £20 million pounds.
Further Reading: How to check that your are dealing with a legitimate cash house buyer
No. The initial offer came in at around 80% of market value. This is realistically what cash house buyers look to pay. It is worth saying that this was an indicative offer and was not based on a full valuation but if they are offering a realistic price at this stage it is a good sign that they are not over inflating their offers just to lure you in.
Further Reading: How much do cash house buyers actually pay?
No. They don’t tie you into any contract or “agreement” you are free to walk away at any point free of cost.
Further Reading: Why you should never sign a contract with a cash house buyer
Yes. Although your fees are only guaranteed to be fully covered if you use one of their recommended solicitors. This is fairly standard practice as they will likely have some sort of price agreement in place with the solicitors that they recommend. If you decide to use an alternative solicitor they will contribute £500 towards the fees and emphasise the fact that they cannot guarantee the timescales if you are using a solicitor that is outside of their recommendations.
My overall experience with Good Move was good. It started very well as I was impressed by their website and it really gave me a sense of confidence that I was dealing with a legitimate company. The first call was a bit of a let down to some extent, it didn’t live up to the promise of the website and I think they could do better in that regard, it didn’t feel coherent and the agent jumped about a bit which led to things being repeated several times. There was certainly no hard sell and they didn’t even push me to book in a follow up call. They gave a realistic initial offer and sent a follow up email immediately as they said they would so all in all a good experience.
Investigation
The guru has painstakingly reviewed and analysed the house buying companies in the UK, assessing them against his strict best practice criteria.
In short the hard work has been done for you, if you want a no obligations cash offer from a genuine cash house buying company with best in class service use the guru recommended service below to be matched with the right buyer for you, your house sale could be just a few clicks away.
Not sure if a cash offer will work for you? Find out what you could get in under a minute without having to enter any contact details.
Are they a genuine house buying company?
Is their offer realistic?
No contract or tie in to sign?
Can you use your own solicitor?
No fees to pay?
Are they registered with a redress scheme?
Good Move is a trading name of ARN Capital Ltd (formerly Goodmove syndicate ltd) which was incorporated in January 2015. They are based in Leeds and are a true cash house buying company. They have over 300 registered charges on companies’ houses and their accounts look to show a strong track record of purchases. Using data from several sources including land registry you can see that the actual purchase percentage of properties that they have recently bought and sold comes in at around 74%, this is 6% lower than what they offer initially.
Goodmove market extensively online via Google ads and also in the national and local press. They also operate an estate agency which you can find advertising properties for sale on Rightmove.
Good Move are members of the National Association Of Property Buyers (NAPB) and are registered with the Property Ombudsman redress scheme. They are also claim to be regulated by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.
Good Move are members of the National Association Of Property Buyers (NAPB) and are registered with the Property Ombudsman redress scheme. They are also claim to be regulated by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.
Good Move have a review rating of 4.7 on Google reviews and 4.9 on trustpilot (both scored out of 5).
Less than 1% of their trustpilot reviews are 1 star which is certainly impressive given that they have over 600 reviews on there. It is clear that a lot of the reviews are from people that only received advice and didn’t actually use their service.
I also suspect that some of the reviews are from people that didn’t use their cash house buying service but either their “investor” service or just sold through them, they even got a five star review from someone that they got through the “long selling process after offer accepted” which doesn’t sound like a quick cash house buying company service.
Good Move have appealed and had ten 1 star reviews removed in the last 12 months with only one appeal failing. They also don’t have a good record of responding to 1 star reviews which is something I think they could handle better.
Perhaps the most concerning thing is a couple of mentions in the 1 star review of the fact that they offered several of the reviewers amazon vouchers to remove their bad reviews. This is certainly not in the spirit of independent review sites and breaches trustpilots guidelines and if this is standard practise it could explain the absence of 1 or 2 star reviews (and some of amazon’s humongous profits).
Goodmove have a good website which feels a lot more complete than a lot of other quick sale companies. They provide a lot of additional information that others don’t and that information is provided in a very digestible manner with graphics where appropriate. The website is also very well written and is more realistic with how they present certain information for example this is a section that talks about timeframes;
“an average fast house sale requirement will be completed within 3 weeks.. In certain circumstances Good Move can buy houses fast in just 7 days”
Most companies would just say “we can buy your house in 7 days guvnor!!!!” whereas the Good Move approach is more realistic but still conveys a similar message.
In general Good Move steer clear of making sensational claims on their website. The one part that sticks out is the claim that they are the “UK’s most regulated property buyer” which is a claim that seems to come from the fact that they are a RICs regulated company, the only cash house buyer to be RICs regulated in fact. The reason for this is that there is no good reason for a cash house buying company to be “RICs regulated” as RICs offer no form of regulation to the quick house sale industry, they might as well join the CAA and say that they are the only house buying company to be regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority because one of the directors has a pilot’s licence. The fact that they send independent RICs surveyors and not even carry out the surveys themselves makes it even more perplexing.
Also the claim that you will get a call from a chartered surveyor is just not true, the agent I spoke to was called a “negotiator” and said he certainly wasn’t a chartered surveyor. Perhaps it used to be the case but it certainly isn’t anymore so they should update their website.
Apart from a strange fixation on being RICs regulated and claiming that everyone in the company is a chartered surveyor the Good Move website is perhaps in the top 1 or 2 in the industry, it is very good and provides some good information although some of the business practices stated on there are contradictory to what their agent say.
They did mention an “investor” option, which on their own website they claim should be avoided “at all costs”.
Their reviews, although very complimentary on the surface might not be as great as reliable as they first seem with some evidence of what could be described as underhand tactics, essentially paying people to remove negative ones and collecting reviews from people that haven’t actually used their cash house buying service. This does pose the question: what are they trying to cover up?
There initially offer was realistic although the data from recent purchases does show that they are potentially under offering on their purchases, good for them but not so good for sellers.
The guru has painstakingly reviewed and analysed the house buying companies in the UK, assessing them against his strict best practice criteria.
In short the hard work has been done for you, if you want a no obligations cash offer from a genuine cash house buying company with best in class service use the guru recommended service below to be matched with the right buyer for you, your house sale could be just a few clicks away.
Not sure if a cash offer will work for you? Find out what you could get in under a minute without having to enter any contact details.
Are they a genuine house buying company?
Is their offer realistic?
No contract or tie in to sign?
Can you use your own solicitor?
No fees to pay?
Are they registered with a redress scheme?
Click the button to get an idea of what an offer from a cash buyer would look like in just a few clicks.
If the offer could work for you we will match you to a Guru approved buyer.
All of the companies have passed our rigorous 16 point checklist.
We have mystery shopped all of the companies and got feedback from past customers.
All of the companies have signed up to the guru best practice guidelines for house buyers.
If you have had a different experience with the company, either positively or negatively, we’d love to hear from you. Tell us your experience by emailing us at reviews@cashhousebuyerguru.com.
While we make every effort to ensure that the information included in this article is as accurate as possible at the time of writing and subsequently revisit and revise the information in light of any changes it is always recommended to carry out your own due diligence before engaging with any company. The views in this article represent our own experiences and opinions and individual experiences may vary.
