If your here then chances are you have recently received a letter through your day from a company claiming that they can buy your house in 7 days, they’ll even give you a great price for your house but is this too good to be true?
The guru casts his expert eye at National Homebuyers to see if their service passes the sniff test of his keen senses.
Read on to see 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%.
Our review scores are based on the criteria outlined in the table below and equate to what we believe is best practice for the quick house sale industry.
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.
I submitted an enquiry on the National Homebuyers website entering my postcode and then my contact details. I then had the option to book a time slot for a callback, I booked one for the next day and I received a call at precisely the time that I had booked.
On the first call I spoke to an agent who’s first asked me if I knew how they worked or if I wanted more information, I asked for more information. They then asked me how I found them and if it was through a letter that I had received to which I replied no I had found them online.
The agent then went on to explain that they are a cash buying company and could provide me a safe guaranteed hassle free house sale because they are not tied to constraints of traditional house buyers, like needing a mortgage for example.
They then went on to explain that they are not like some house buying companies who only list your property and try to sell it on your behalf.
This is an interesting thing to bring up at this point and it is certainly a practice worth avoiding if you are looking for a quick guaranteed house sale. You can read more about shady practices used by some house buying companies here.
They then went on to explain that 4 – 6 weeks is a comfortable timeframe for them to be able to buy my property but if I needed it slightly quicker than that they could likely accommodate that. At this point they also informed my that the service isn’t for everyone since I will get below market value for my house and they ask me if that is acceptable to me.
Next was some questions about the property and my situation in regards to selling the property.
Then the operator gave me a ‘very rough ballpark figure’ based on the recent sales of similar properties that had sold in my area.
During this part there was a prolonged silence as the agent typed away at their keyboard making the odd muffled sound here and there. It was noticeable that they were in a loud call centre with lots of activity going on in the background.
They came back with quite a wide range, which spanned £15,000 from the low figure to the high figure and the agent asked me if that was in an acceptable range.
I said yes and they explained that the next step was to book a call with their manager who could give me a clearer idea of what the offer would be.
They then confirmed some further details about the property (which took a rather long time due to the amount of typing between questions) and booked me a time slot with the manager.
At this point they asked me if I had any further questions, which of course I did. This threw up something fairly interesting. I asked how do I know they won’t change the offer further down the line and the agent said that ‘they get around this’ by not firming up an offer fully until the point of exchange of contracts, which sounds like a way of saying that the offer could change at any point.
Also an interesting point to note was that the agent hadn’t actually heard of the NAPB and actually had to go on to the NAPB website to check if they were members.
After my questioning the agent let me know that I would receive an email after the phone call inviting me to leave a review if I had found the service I had received so far to be good (more on this later). This first call lasted around 25 minutes.
The second call was with the manager and was short and to the point. Firstly he reconfirmed some of the information that I had provided and asked me a few additional questions about the property and spoke through the recent sold prices in the area and my reasons for selling.
He then went on to say that because they “don’t know what it is worth” they would work of a figure for now that they would base their offer on. He then talked about the market saying that traditional house sales through estate agents are taking around 4 – 5 months at the moment.
He then went on to explain that if I could work with the offer that he makes the next step would be to send an agent around to carry out a market appraisal of the property at which point they would make their “final offer” and they could purchase the property “as quickly as your solicitors could move”.
A couple of points worth noting. The “final offer” despite it’s name isn’t necessarily the final amount you will receive as it is “subject to survey” now this is fairly standard practise because if any major issues are raised on the survey any house buyer would have to revise their offer.
The other point is the emphasis being put on your solicitor to hit the timeframe, while this is true to a certain extent it does sound like they are setting the scene to pass the blame of any future delays on you and not them.
At the end of the call the manager said he would send an email with the offer which he did and gave me his direct telephone number. If I wanted to accept the offer I simply have to reply to the email.
The National Homebuyers have a two step sales process;
Step 1: There is a first call, which acts as a sort of screening call where they give you a ballpark figure to qualify your interest. If you are ok with the rough number then you are booked on a call with a more experienced closer.
Step 2: There is a call with the manager. This is a very quick call where the manager provides you with an actual offer figure which is then followed up with an email. You can then either phone them directly or respond to the email to accept the ‘offer’.
National Homebuyers Valuation Process
According to National Homebuyers their valuation process has 3 steps;
Step 1: A desktop valuation – the agent on the phone will ask you questions about the property and take a look at recent sold prices of similar properties in your area to determine a rough value of your property.
Step 2: Local agent desktops – if you are interested in the offer they will then ask local estate agents that have listed houses within a half mile radius of your property to carry out a desktop valuation, this is similar to what they have already done but will include some local knowledge.
Step 3: A local estate agent will value the property – they will ask a local agent to come around and carry out a market appraisal on your house. The agent can see the condition first hand so can spot any undisclosed defects (cracks, japanese knotweed etc) that might affect the value of the property.
Now it is unclear at what point Step 2 takes place because by this point you have already accepted the offer and they are going to send an agent round to carry out a full market appraisal. After step 3 has been completed you can likely expect a revised offer based on the agents evaluation, be prepared for it to be lower.
The initial offer, based on the value that they provided worked out at just under 83%.
An initial offer of 83%, given the fact that the circumstances I provided didn’t qualify for any stamp duty exemptions, is slightly on the high side.
The communication with National Homebuyers beyond the 2 phone calls was simply a follow up email confirming my initial offer which included a short form to fill in if I wanted to proceed with the offer and that was it. I certainly wasn’t hounded or pestered in any way. Communication throughout was professional.
The only other communication I received was an email with the subject “review request” which said that they are currently running a competition and I could win £1000 if I left them a positive review on the service I received.
There are a couple of things that I don’t like about this, the timing being the first, this was sent right after the first call had ended so before I had even received an initial offer and long before anything that could be described as a service. So what am I reviewing, a phone call? Even the worst company in the world could do an ok job on a 20 minute mostly scripted phone call. This makes it seem like a ploy to skew their positive review numbers in their favor.
The second thing that I take exception to is that it is implied that the review has to be positive in order to get entered into the prize draw. This is in fact a breach of the trustpilot guidelines which states that;
“Invitations must be written and structured in a neutral and unbiased way. Leave out any statements that try to persuade customers to write reviews that reflect anything other than their honest, genuine opinion.”
Offering an incentive to leave a review is also a breach of the guidelines;
“Businesses are no longer allowed to offer consumers an incentive of any kind for reviews of any kind. Incentives include, but are not limited to promotional discounts, monetary rewards, loyalty points, gifts, coupons, etc.”
Here we ask our 4 key questions that you should always ask yourself when dealing with a cash house buying company.
Yes. National Homebuyers are a legitimate company that have been trading for almost 20 years.
Further Reading: How to check that your are dealing with a legitimate cash house buyer
No. They offered around 83% which although is higher than the 80% that you should expect to receive is not a million miles away.
Further Reading: How much do cash house buyers actually pay?
No.
Further Reading: Why you should never sign a contract with a cash house buyer
Yes you can but your costs are only covered up to £1000 and there is a stipulation that for them to pay this the exchange of contracts must happen within 30 days of you accepting their offer.
My overall experience with National Homebuyers was generally positive despite the agent on the initial call not having the answers to all of my questions they did actually do some research to try to answer them. There were however some red flags which I will pick up later in the summary.
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?
National Homebuyers is a trading name of Momentum Asset Management Limited which was established in 2004 and is part of a group of companies. They have a long history of registered charges which is an indicator that they are a true cash house buyer. After some analysis of their recent house purchases using tools such as rightmove plus and companies house registration data their actual offer percentage comes out at around 76% so they are making a good margin on their purchases.
National Homebuyers are not registered with the National Association of Property Buyers (NAPB) or with the property ombudsman (TPO), these are very minimal requirements and it would always be advisable to use a house buying company that is registered with a formal redress scheme should anything go wrong.
Despite their own website saying 4.4 their actual review score on Google is 4.1 at time of writing and 4.5 on Trustpilot with 12% being one star reviews. It is worth noting that National Homebuyers marketing is based on sending blanket direct mail to peoples houses, people taking exception to this approach has had an impact on the number of 1 star reviews they receive.
Looking at the trustpilot statistics they do seem to have a policy of trying to get bad reviews removed which they fail at the majority of the time but they have managed to get some removed and it looks like the main reason is that the reviewer didn’t respond to trustpilot so they could have actually been genuine reviews.
If they weren’t sending out incentivised review requests after the initial phone call (which breaches several of trustpilots own guidelines) their review situation would look far worse than it does.
They also seem to try to discredit 1 star reviews by saying that they have no record of the reviewer and that they must have been dealing with a different company but trustpilot have reached out the reviewer for documentation as proof and have verified that they are genuine customers.
The website looks a little dated and is what I would describe as “busy” but is easy enough to use despite the request a callback popup that slides its way intrusively onto the screen every now and then.
Not a claim as such but they do have some interesting small print on the website regarding the solicitor fees that they claim they will pay for, it reads;
We will pay up to £1000 towards legal fees upon completion, subject to exchange of contracts within 30 days of acceptance of offer.
Since they said that a comfortable timescale for them is 4 to 6 weeks to complete on a sale this seems something to be wary of. The way that this reads is that if they take 5 weeks to complete on the sale then you would have to pay your own solicitor fees because that is outside of the 30 day window. I haven’t come across this with any other cash house buyer and it is a strange stipulation. It is also unclear what is classed as the “acceptance of offer” given that the “final offer” doesn’t happen until after an estate agent has been round to value the property but by that stage you have already accepted the initial offer.
On the face of it National Homebuyers are a professional cash house buying company that purchase a large number of properties. However there are some red flags, they are not members of the NAPB and are not registered with a redress scheme such as the property ombudsman, this makes it more difficult to seek redress if you feel you have been mistreated.
They have a strange and seemingly unnecessary clause when it comes to paying the solicitor fees.
They also have some dubious practices when it comes to collecting reviews, asking for them at a very early stage and incentivising positive responses.
If dealing with this company it is worth bearing in mind that the offer you accept initially might not be the sum you receive at the end as there are several points in the process where that offer could be revised, after the agent valuation and after the survey for example. This is the same with many cash house buying companies and you should never make plans based on the initial offer, especially if it seems too good to be true or if there is little evidence to support the initial valuation.
There is evidence of substantial offer reductions in their reviews.
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?
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.
