They are one of the most well known brands in the quick house sale sector due to their TV advertising but do they deliver a blockbuster service or a box office flop?
As the Cash House Buyer Guru, it’s time for my We Buy Any Home review where I’ll take an in-depth look, peeling back the curtain with my expert eye to give you the insights you need to judge for yourself.
Read on to see what has been 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.
I made an inquiry on the we buy any home website (https://www.webuyanyhome.com/) via the “Get Free Cash Offer” button.
The first set of questions is around the address of the property that you are looking to sell. Then you are taken to another question which asks you about the reason for your sale with a comprehensive drop down list of options.
This is probably so they can establish if they would qualify for a stamp duty exemption in your case. If you would they are likely to make a higher offer as it would reduce their overall costs. To read more about how much a cash house buying company can offer for your home read our article here.
Then you are asked how quickly you would like to sell with time frames ranging from 1-2 weeks up to “not in a hurry at all”.
Finally you are asked for your contact details; name, contact number and email address.
After you submit these final details you get a thank you message confirming that your details have been submitted. It also says that you will receive a call within the next 24 hours which was certainly true as they called me back in the next minute.
It is worth noting here that in their frequently asked questions under the “how long will it take you to make an offer on my home?” question they state that “we offer a free instant online house valuation to give you an immediate idea of how much your house is worth”. This was certainly not the case when I entered my details, there was no “online house valuation” just a phone call from the company so be prepared to speak to someone if you are enquiring via this route.
I was phoned by an agent of We Buy Any Home regarding my enquiry. The first thing that they told me was that they were “inundated” with cash house buying requests and that he would need to take some information to get the big picture of why I was enquiring to sell my house to a quick sale company.
I went on to explain my situation and then he asked me to describe the property in terms of condition, size etc. They asked me if I have had the house valued already and if I had ruled out the option of an open market sale.
The agent then went on to say that they could complete on a sale within 7 to 10 days and enquired about what sort of timeframes I would want to work to. They then asked me further questions about my circumstances and then said that he was going to get “straight to the point” and started talking about the property market and recent sales in my area.
They then went on to explain that since these sales the market has actually got worse due to rising interest rates, “being in a full recession now” and the affordability for mortgages has gone down. After talking down the market he went on to tell me what he believed my property was worth in the current market and made me an offer on the back of that figure.
I asked if this offer was set in stone and they then went on to explain that this is an initial offer and they would have to view the property, carry out a valuation and a survey so they couldn’t promise me that this would be the final amount I would receive after going through the valuation process.
Then they went on to explain that if the offer dropped at any point I would be able to walk away with no fees. On the subject of fees the agent explained that I would have to pay my own solicitor fees (contrary to what it says on their website). I could use one of their panel of solicitors which have cheaper rates, around £800, or I could choose my own solicitor but either way I would have to pay the fees.
They then went on to explain the next steps which if I accepted the initial offer (with no guarantees that it would actually be the amount I would receive at the end) they would then send out a docu-sign contract. After I had signed that I would be contacted by one of their client care team who would send me out a client care pack. I would then get a call from someone who would arrange for an asset management company to come around and take videos, pictures and floor plans of the property which would then get sent to 2-3 local estate agents so they could produce a valuation.
I then asked some questions, the main one being around what happens if I decided to walk away at any point. Again they explained that if they were to lower the offer at any point I could walk away but if they hadn’t lowered their offer and I wanted to walk away from the deal (which as a home seller you should have the right to do) then I would have to pay £950. Which was to cover the costs of “the work they had put in” for their own security.
They then asked me if it was something that I would be interested in and then he reiterated that the offer was 85%. I asked if that was fairly standard and they admitted that it was on the higher end of what you would receive from most companies, they mentioned that some companies will offer 90% but “they will reduce you”. He asked me when would be the best time to call me back to discuss if I was interested in the offer.
The sales process for we buy any home is a fairly straightforward one. They make you an initial offer over the phone and if you can accept that offer they send you over a contract to sign, this is an e-document sent via email that you sign digitally. Once this has been signed then their actual valuation process starts.
Once you have signed the contract any time frame that you want to sell in can be deemed pretty much redundant as you are now tied in to them as a buyer. Another point here is that if you want to pull out from the sale you are liable to pay £950 unless they lower their offer at which point you can walk away with no cost.
It is also worth noting that the valuation process hasn’t even started at this point so it is likely that the amount you have been offered will change at some point.
The we buy any house valuation process is a 3 step process;
Step 1: They will carry out a “desktop valuation” while on the phone with you. This involves them asking you questions about the property, condition, number of bathrooms that sort of thing and them taking a look at recent sold prices in your area to come up with a rough estimate of what your property might be worth. This is then the basis of the initial offer they make you.
Step 2: They then get local agents to value your property. They do this by getting an asset management company to take photos and videos of your property which they then send to up to 3 estate agents from your local area and ask them for a valuation report. They then make a revised offer based on these agent valuations.
Step 3: Finally they will have a survey carried out on your property. While this is perhaps not technically part of the valuation process if the results of the survey come back unfavourable, for example their are signs of structural damage, this will certainly affect the value of the property and will almost definitely lead to a revised offer.
The initial offer I received was 85% what they valued the property at during their desktop valuation.
This is certainly on the high side given that I don’t qualify for any stamp duty exemptions.
Beyond the phone calls I did receive an email entitled “here is your guaranteed cash offer”, which is interesting wording given that it is in no way guaranteed at this point. In fact the only thing that is guaranteed after you sign the contract is that you owe them £950 if you no longer want to sell your property to them (unless they lower their offer first).
Here we ask our 4 key questions that you should always ask yourself when dealing with a cash house buying company.
Yes. We Buy Any Home are a registered company and the parent company turns over around £40 million per year.
Further Reading: How to check that your are dealing with a legitimate cash house buyer
No. Although 85% is on the upper end of what a house buying company will pay, given that this would not qualify for any stamp duty exemptions, it is not ludicrously high. Although purchase history data suggests that they pay around 80%.
Further Reading: How much do cash house buyers actually pay?
Yes. You have to sign some “simple paperwork” which includes a contract which states that if you decide to pull out for any reason you now owe them £950.
Further Reading: Why you should never sign a contract with a cash house buyer
Yes. You can use your own solicitor but unlike the vast majority of house buying companies they do not contribute towards the cost of this.
My overall experience with the company was fine, they sounded professional on the phone and they called me back when they said they would and emailed me what they said they would in good time.
My experience was let down by the disconnect between the information that is on the website and what was described over the phone. The website is quite misleading in my opinion. For example it promises an ‘online house valuation’ which actually comes in the form of a phone call. It states that they cover the costs of the solicitor fees when over the phone they said that they don’t. Also nowhere does it mention the £950 charge if you decide not to sell once you have signed the “simple paperwork”. There is also a ridiculous table that tries to say that you will get more money selling to them at 85% than you would through an estate agent taking into account various costs with the “true market value” being £100,000 but then the “agreed sale price” for the estate agent being £94,000 (which would surely mean that the true market value was £94,000) but their offer is based on the £100,000 figure so £6k is fudged from the start.
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?
Firstly, do not confuse We Buy Any Home with We Buy Any House, see our We Buy Any House Review here.
According to their website We Buy Any Home is a “trading style” of 2 companies. EMC Finance established in 2010 and Kazai Capital Ltd established in 2013. You can see from looking at their registered charges for these companies that they do indeed buy houses. Using various market tools to work out he bought and sold prices for the properties they have purchased and resold the actual offer percentage comes in at around 80%, which isn’t a bad amount but is a 5% discrepancy from what they are initially offering. Either they are not very good at valuing houses or they are reducing the offers further down the line.
We Buy Any Home are members of the National Association Of Property Buyers event though they don’t show the badge on the website. They are also registered with the The property ombudsman.
| Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|
| Quick Initial Contact | Misleading Website Information | |
| Professional Interaction | Potential for Offer Reduction | |
| Legitimate Company | Slow Valuation Process | |
| Use of Own Solicitor | Negative Reviews | |
| Possible Delay Tactics | ||
| Contractual Obligations |
We Buy Any Home currently have a 4.1 star rating from Google Reviews and 4.3 on Trustpilot (both ratings are out of 5). 7% percent of the reviews on Trustpilot are 1 star. There is evidence in some of the reviews of price decreases and also the valuation process being slow.
This is a major drawback of signing a contract with a cash house buying company, once you have signed they have no real incentive to anything urgently and they can actually benefit from slowing the process down especially if you have a hard deadline that you need to meet. The closer it gets to that deadline the more likely you are to accept a reduced offer. You can read our article on why you should avoid signing a contract with a house buying company here.
Looking in to the details section of Trustpilot you can see that in the last 12 months 19% of their reviews have been one star – this is a very high percentage that gets alarm bells ringing.
You can also find evidence that they work pretty hard to remove one star reviews flagging (basically appealing against) 21 of their one star reviews in the last 12 months. From these 21 only 3 were reinstated and 15 were removed because the reviewer “didn’t respond to Trustpilot’s request to resolve the breach of Trustpilots guidelines” which means that they could have still been genuine reviews but just didn’t respond to an email.
The website is quite new it is easy to use. Submitting an enquiry is a straightforward process. However some of the information provided on the website contradicts their actual business practices.
Address: Prince Frederick House, 37 Maddox Street, Mayfair, London, W1S 2AU
On the website they claim to be able to buy a house in 7 days. This is very difficult at the best of times and considering their valuation process relies on 3 local estate agents valuing your property based on videos and photos they are completely reliant on the responsiveness of those agents who can be an elusive breed at the best of times. Given this and the fact that they also get a survey on the property it is highly unlikely that they complete on many sales in 7 days.
You can read our article on how fast a cash house buying company can actually buy your househere.
If you look at the website for we buy any home experts (webuyanyhomeexperts.com) we can see that they are also a trading style of Kazai Capital ltd, one of the companies that is also associated with ‘we buy any home’ and they also share the same address (First Floor, 50 St Mary Axe
London, EC3A 8FR) it is therefore fair to assume that they are part of the same company and are likely to have very similar if not identical business practices and you will probably be talking to the same people when dealing with either company. It is not uncommon for companies in the quick house sale to run multiple brands to give them multiple bites at the cherry, although with such a similar name and branding it is hard to see why they would want to do this.
There is a big discrepancy between the information provided on the We Buy Any Home website and what their agents tell you over the phone. They do not pay for your solicitor fees which is standard practice amongst most reputable companies in the quick sale market. They send you a contract to sign which ties you in to having to pay £950 to back out of the deal which again a lot of companies won’t. Their initial offer is certainly on the high side in terms of percentage and is in no way guaranteed because this offer is given to you before they have carried out their formal valuation on your home.
It is also worth noting that the contract is also sent out and signed before the valuation which seems very strange timing and could mean that they offer high initially, tie you in so you can’t go elsewhere and then value your home and provide you with their actual offer – this is nice for them as it eliminates the competition but not so much for you as the seller.
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.
