Six top reasons to sell your UK house to a cash homebuyer. Image credit: AdobeStock
From London to Liverpool, the housing market across the UK is enjoying another boom that may make it a good time to consider selling your home. With the right conditions you could make a nice profit selling your property, although one of the biggest questions to tackle first is the method through which you’d like to sell your home.
Each approach has its own advantages and some methods have specific drawbacks, and the right choice for selling your home is not necessarily the correct option for someone else.
You’ll have to decide between the three alternatives based on your needs and wants, including how quickly you want to sell and how much profit you would like to make from the sale. There are different speeds, costs and other aspects involved with the different types of selling.
Estate agents will do most of the hard work in finding a buyer for your home, including creating and advertising the listing that includes photographs of the property and key details such as how many rooms it has. But selling this way can often take several months or more than a year in worst case scenarios, which can be a major problem if you need to sell your home fast. And you’ll also have to pay the estate agent commission, usually based on your house’s final sale price, which will cut your overall net sale profit.
Auctions can be a faster option than estate agents, with the entire process taking a couple of months from the date you list your home for sale through to completion of the necessary legal paperwork for a successful sale. But selling this way can be considered a gamble; you might not get any bids; in which case it won’t sell and you’ll have to start all over again. Or you may only receive a bid at the reserve price, which is the lowest value at which you are comfortable with the property selling — even if that means you’ll get a reduced profit. And you will also have to pay the auctioneer fees for their work, usually around 2 percent of the final sale price of your flat or house.
Fast buyers are companies like LDN Properties, which launched in 2003 and offers speedy and competitive offers to buy all shapes, types and sizes of leasehold and freehold houses and flats throughout London. We spoke with experts from the company to get their top reasons on why selling to a fast cash property buyer can be the best choice for many homeowners – not just in the capital city but for anyone in the UK ready to sell.
1. Benefit from the speed of selling your home compared to other methods
Selling your home to a fast buyer is, as the name suggests, often a quick process. You can expect it to take just a few short weeks from the date you first call the company to inquire about selling through to the date on which contracts are exchanged and you obtain the proceeds.
That’s usually significantly faster than using an estate agent and usually faster than selling via auction. Some people need a very rapid home sale, for example if they are trying to prevent repossession or resolve some other urgent financial problem. Therefore, if the speed of sale if your number one need, consider using a quick home buyer instead of the other methods.
2. Increase your profit thanks to the lack of fees or commission
Honest fast cash property buyers will never charge sellers any commission or fees, unlike estate agents and auctioneers whose charges will reduce your overall profit from the sale of your home. And those expenses can often be significant, reducing your net proceeds substantially, and that’s something you’ll have to account for in your home moving budget.
If you want to ensure the maximum profit from selling your home, a cash buyer might be ideal because you know you’ll receive exactly the amount they quote for purchasing your property.
3. Remove all of the stress from trying to sell your property
Selling your home can be stressful, but fast cash buyers remove all of the hassle. You’ll work one-on-one with them for a straightforward and streamlined sale. Simply call the fast property cash buying company of your choice and tell them you’d like a quote for selling your home. They should be able to make a tentative offer quickly, and most companies will give you at least a week to consider whether you want to accept it.
And you won’t have to worry about any of the inconvenient and time-consuming drawbacks of selling using an estate agent or an auctioneer, including having many potential buyers touring your property on official viewings. Instead, when you sell to a fast home buyer, the only visit you’ll get is from a company representative to inspect the property ahead of making a final offer.
If you accept the final offer, the fast buyer will work with your solicitor to complete all of the legal documents for purchasing your property as quickly as they can, with no stress for you.
4. Know that you can trust the legitimate fast home buyers
The fast home buying industry is overseen by The Property Ombudsman (TPO), an independent entity that issues policies aimed at protecting homeowners from fraud. All companies registered with TPO, giving you extra peace of mind when selling.
And it’s simple to check a quick buyer’s membership status by looking them up on the organisation’s website. Just click on the “Find a member” on the main page and then enter a fast buyer’s name. If the company is a legitimate member, such as LDN Properties, their membership details will appear.
5. Have the ability to sell your property regardless of its condition
Another great perk of using a fast cash homebuyer is that they often have experience with buying many different types, shapes, sizes and conditions or properties such as dilapidated homes, houses that have the presence of the invasive species Japanese knotweed in the garden, flats that currently have sitting tenants on lengthy leases, properties built from non-standard construction materials such as concrete, and many other examples.
By contrast, some auction houses and estate agencies focus on selling a more-limited range of properties and they might have never sold your type of home. If that’s the case then they could struggle to know how to market it and find you a buyer quickly or at a good value.
6. Relax with the knowledge that your property sale won’t fall through
One of the biggest concerns that people have when selling their home via an estate agent is that it’s easy for sales to fall through. Buyers might get cold feet, or have sudden financial problems, or find another property that they prefer more. And unfortunately until binding legal documents are signed, there’s not much that sellers can do when this common situation occurs. But it can be very stressful and waste a lot of a homeowner’s time and money.
You can avoid this happening when you sell your house or flat to a fast cash buyer, because they are looking at purchasing your home as a business choice and not something they are doing because of personal reasons. Because it’s a financial transaction to a quick property buyer, they are far more likely to see through their offers compared to a conventional buyer. This gives homeowners much-needed added reassurance that the sale will actually happen.
If you’re ready to sell your house or flat, carefully consider the above top six reasons for using a cash homebuyer. Using this method can often be an ideal way to make a decent profit, avoid having to pay any fees, and enjoy a stress-free sale before you move to your next home.