Fast home buyers vs estate agents?

Making the decision to seek a buyer for your property

If you are the owner of a leasehold or freehold house, flat or another other type of residential property, making the decision to sell it is an important one that deserves some careful thought.

There are many reasons why someone could want to sell their home, for example needing to raise funds for a move to another country, trying to resolve some financial difficulties, wanting to move to your next dream property, getting ready to move to a retirement home, and other scenarios.

Whatever the reason behind your decision to sell your home, one of the most crucial choices you will make is selecting how you want to go about finding a buyer for the property.

Two popular choices are selling to a quick home buyer or using the services of an estate agent. And there are specific advantages and disadvantages associated with both of these methods regarding how much they charge, if anything, in fees, how long they take, and other issues.

This guide provides detailed information on the pros and cons linked to both selling strategies, to help you make an informed decision about how to seek a buyer. And if you eventually decide that you do not want to sell using either of these options, you will also get to read details about what’s involved with the other choices of selling at an auction or selling without any help.

Pros and cons of selling to a fast home buyer

When you’re thinking of selling your house or flat to a fast buyer, you should consider the several benefits and few potential negatives of this method:

You typically will not pay fees and can keep all of the proceeds from your sale – One of the best perks of selling to a quick buying business is the fact that they’ll never charge you fees when they buy your house or flat. This means that you will get to keep 100 percent of the profits from the sale of your home without having to deduct the fees that you’d have to pay an estate agent. If maximising profit is your goal with selling, it’s preferable to sell to a fast home buyer.

You can sell your house or flat much quicker than with an estate agent – As their name suggests, quick buyers are able to make a very fast purchase of your house or flat. This makes them ideal if your goal is selling on a rapid schedule, because the sale can happen much faster than if you sell via an estate agent.

Of course, as with any industry there are some potential bad actors in the we buy any property business. There is at least one potential con of selling to a fast buyer:

Disreputable quick buyers might make a very low purchase offer – Unfortunately if you contact an untrustworthy fast buying company they might give you a cash offer for your home that is much less than your property is actually worth. A simple way to avoid such a scam is by doing some research to find out a rough estimate of your home’s value. You can do this on the Government Land Registry website, where you can enter your address and find out how much nearby houses and flats are worth. But be cautious and know that these prices are just general guidelines and not necessarily the most accurate and up-to-date values.

Pros and cons of selling via an estate agent

There are some benefits of selling through an estate agent, including saving you some of the more stressful work of securing a buyer. Here are some of pros of estate agents:

They’ll take care of all the hard work of trying to find a buyer – When you contact an estate agent to sell your home, a major perk is that they will handle all of the hard work involved with trying to find a buyer for your property. This includes writing a listing for the house or flat, taking photos of it for the listing, advertising the property at their office and in newspapers, online and elsewhere, and holding viewings where prospective buyers come to see the home in person. All of this work is incredibly time-consuming, so not having to do it yourself is a major bonus.

But there are also some cons of selling through an estate agent that in the long run could result in you losing out on money you could have otherwise kept from the sale:

Estate agents might overvalue your home to get your business – Unfortunately not every estate agent is honest, and some of them are known to use sneaky tricks. One tactic such estate agents use is to initially give you an elevated price estimate for your home, hoping it will get you excited to sell through that estate agent – even though they only pitched that price tag to get your business, and will actually try to get you to settle for a much lower offer, earning you much less for your house than it’s really worth.

You’ll have to pay the estate agent fees for securing a sale – Another downside of deciding to sell your home through an estate agent is that they will charge fees for taking care of the work of listing, marketing, and holding viewings for your home. You’ll have to subtract these fees from the final sale revenue, which can be a problem if you are looking to make as much money from a sale as possible.

It’s possible you’ll have to wait a very long time to find a buyer – There’s no set timescale for selling and exchanging through an estate agent, and some houses sold this way go unsold for many months and even years. If selling your house quickly is your priority, you might not be able to do it through an estate agent.

Other options available for trying to sell your house or flat

After reviewing the pros and cons of selling your home to either a fast home buyer or through an estate agent, you might decide that you don’t want to use either of those options. In that case, you may want to think about selling via a property auction or selling without any help.

Just as fast buyers and estate agents have benefits and drawbacks based on costs, time taken to sell and more, the same applies with both auctions and selling on your own. For example, it can take more than a year to sell when doing so without any third-party help. And if you choose an auction then you will have to pay commission to the auctioneer if the property sells.

It can be a good idea to write down your main priorities with the sale of your home, such as your willingness – if any – to pay commission, how fast you want to find a buyer, and your goal sale price. Then compare all of these issues against the specific details of the various methods that you have available for selling your home, and this may help identify the best one for your needs.

Selling via a property auction

Auctioning a home is a gamble because you may not get any bids on your property, which means that it does not sell. You would then need to start again with trying to find a buyer, delaying a sale even further.

Or you might just receive one bid at the reserve price, and this is the lowest price at which you accept your home can sell at the auction. A bid at this value is a legally binding agreement to sell your property, and the buyer could sue you to enforce it if you try to abandon the sale. That’s why you must take time to calculate a reserve price that should lead to a profit, and does not risk selling at a loss or selling breakeven close to the price that you paid for the home.

When calculating the reserve price, account for the fee that the auctioneer will charge you if they succeed in selling your property. This is often charged at 2.5 percent of a home’s final auction sale price, and it adds to your costs as it is taken out of the proceeds right away.

There are some auctioneers that might be open to reducing the rate of commission that they charge you, or to have the winning bidder pay a share of your costs, so it can be a good idea to inquire with individual auction houses about whether either of these options are possible.

The auctioneer charges this fee for the work that they put in to selling your home, which begins with producing a listing for the property. They advertise this ahead of the auction to get buyers interested, and then they host the auction itself. The highest price bid at the time that the auction ends is announced as the winner and therefore the person buying your home.

Some auction houses use the traditional method, with which your property’s listing is marketed for a certain number of weeks or months and then the auction is held on a set day and time, when people can place bids on the home. The highest price bid at the moment that the auctioneer calls the auction to an end is the winner and will be the person buying your home.

Other auctioneers might offer the modern method, through which your listing will be active for a specific number of weeks or months and during that time people can place bids on the home 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The top value bid at the exact time that the listing expires is then announced as the winner of the auction, and therefore purchasing your property.

Selling through an auction is not the speediest choice, as it involves a fair amount of waiting. This includes many weeks or months between when you first choose to sell using this method and when the auction happens. And if your home sells, the buyer then has about 28 days to sign all the legal papers and finish their other mandatory tasks to complete the purchase.

It can also be worthwhile asking auctioneers if they might be willing to shorten the deadline for the buyer to do these actions, because this could speed up the selling timeline. But just beware that other auction houses might give the buyer even more time than 28 days, which would inevitably add even more time to what could already be a long selling schedule.

Selling without any help

Yet another option for selling a property is to do so on your own, which means that you will have to handle all of the tasks needed to find a buyer without assistance from an estate agent or an auctioneer. This includes producing and advertising a listing, scheduling viewings, hearing offers from prospective buyers and aiming to guide one to the exchange of contracts.

Because of the large amount of work involved, this can be a very slow and complicated way to sell a house or flat, and you should not be surprised if it takes more than a year before you receive a serious offer. Even if you get a genuine offer, there’s always the risk that the person making it changes their mind and scraps the offer, causing the sale to collapse. This would require that you then restart the search for a buyer, delaying a sale by much more time. And you can’t penalise the person that cancelled the offer unless contracts are already exchanged.

Due to the stress, time and effort associated with this method of selling, it is usually only suggested as a viable option for those owners who have previously managed to sell a home. Alternatively, if you have a family member or friend that has experience with successfully selling properties, you could ask them if they are willing to help with the sale at no charge.

The only obvious advantage of selling your home without any assistance is that it would prevent you from having to pay any commission to an auctioneer or an estate agent, which helps with lowering your expenses. But you could discover that any saving you make this way is eliminated by the money that you have to spend on promoting your listing and other selling tasks.

If you are a homeowner that is determined to not pay commission when selling your property, you might want to instead consider selling to an honest quick buyer like LDN Properties. These companies never charge commission when buying a flat or house, so you achieve that goal, but you get the extra benefit of enjoying a much more rapid sale. That’s because quick buyers can usually complete the entire process of buying a home within just a few short weeks, and that includes the important last stages of exchanging contracts and paying you the proceeds.

Quick buyers can move so speedily because they already have the funds in place needed for purchasing your home, which means that you can enjoy a no-hassle, stress-free and streamlined sale of your property that is done speedily and at minimal cost.

Getting your house or ready to sell once you’re ready to find a buyer

No matter which method you ultimately decide to use for selling your house or flat, there are some simple steps that you should take to prepare the property for buyers. Many of these actions are no-cost or low-cost and require little effort, but can help make a sale smoother.

Outside of your home you should assess whether there are simple tasks you can pursue to improve its appearance, so that it makes a good first impression on potential buyers. This can include moving and weeding any garden or other green space that you might have, replacing any broken windows or missing roof tiles, and giving window ledges a fresh coat of paint.

Inside the property you will want to remove as much clutter as possible from rooms and make sure that they are recently cleaned, so that they appear larger to anyone touring the home on a viewing, as this can make the overall property seem more valuable to them. Decluttering a room can include throwing away furniture and other items you don’t use anymore, as Good Housekeeping says.

Finally, you may want to assess any negative issues that your home has which you might be able to fix before trying to find a buyer. Typically this will be structural problems that can range from an isolated leak through to significant issues like subsidence affecting the entire building.

You should take time to consider whether you have the energy, financial resources and time available to pursue corrective work at your property. The benefit of doing this is that it resolves any problems with the home before you put it on the market, and therefore prevents a situation where a buyer greatly reduces their offer the property because of the flaw that exists.

But some repairs could take months, which is far from perfect for those homeowners who want to sell as quickly as possible. Or they might cost thousands of pounds, which is directly at odds with other sellers’ goal of securing a buyer for their home whilst keeping costs low.

If you either cannot, or do not want to, proceed with repair work at your house or flat before selling then you still have solutions available. One answer is to get in touch with a quick home buyer like LDN Properties. These companies make fast and fair offers to buy almost any property, including those that have structural damage or any other major problems. You won’t pay any fees on the sale and the entire process should only take a few short weeks.