Selling a House Privately

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Instead of trying to sell your property using the services of an estate agent or an auctioneer, an alternative completely legal approach is to attempt selling privately. Doing so means you’ll likely sell to a house buying company, but there are certain steps involved with this process that you learn about, in order to increase your prospects of receiving a rapid and competitive offer for your home.

1. What does it mean when someone sells their home privately?
2. Factors in favour of trying to sell your property privately
3. Potential cons linked with selling a flat or house privately
4. What’s the process for successfully selling a home privately?
5. Alternative ways to sell a home beyond doing so privately
6. Top questions about selling your house or flat privately

What does it mean when someone sells their home privately?

If you are the owner of a leasehold or freehold property, you might be thinking about selling it for one of many reasons. Perhaps you have found your next dream home, or you inherited a retirement property that you don’t want to keep, or many other common scenarios.
One of the biggest decisions that you’ll make is deciding which approach you would like to use for finding a buyer, and an approach some people take is selling their home privately.
Typically, this refers to selling without the property going on the market. Selling your home publicly is different because with that approach you would usually enlist the help of an auctioneer or an estate agent to find a buyer, and this includes advertising your
Therefore, selling your home privately often refers to doing so for cash to a quick buyer, like LDN Properties. These are companies that make fast and fair offers to purchase a wide range of homes throughout the UK, typically with the added bonus of never charging homeowners any commission to sell.
This approach to selling homes has become increasingly popular throughout the UK, increasing to 56 percent of non-market property sales by 2023, which is a rise from the 45 percent of sales that they represented in 2015, as reported by This Is Money. And the upward trend may continue given the benefits of selling this way.
Keep reading to learn about the many pros, and a few potential cons, linked with selling your home privately, as well as advice on alternative approaches to sell your home.

Factors in favour of trying to sell your property privately

One reason why selling a home privately is popular is that it can only take a handful of weeks to complete the entire process, including exchanging contracts and paying you the proceeds. That’s much faster than the many months or that it can take to sell using the services of an auctioneer or an estate agent, so if you want a fast sale then consider selling privately.
Quick buyers have the ability to purchase properties so speedily because they don’t need to wait for many weeks or months to first get approval for a mortgage to buy the home.
Another factor in favour of selling privately is that it can be a good way to sell a “problem” property that may have some negative aspect that is making other buyers lose interest.
LDN Properties is a private homebuying company that was founded more than 15 years ago, and it has a great reputation for making swift and fair offers to buy all categories of houses and flats, regardless of any structural problems or their age, condition, location, shape, size or type.
Its ever-growing list of property purchases and offers made throughout the UK includes, but is not limited to, flats that don’t have a license to alter, flats with a management company, properties that have mortgage arrears, smallholdings, houses that do not have an electrical certificate, eco homes, properties that do not have any parking space, mixed-use houses, penthouse flats, properties that are located within high risk flooding zones, homes that have spray foam insulation, flats that have an expensive service charge, unmodernised properties, houses with an overgrown garden, properties that have an infestation, smoker’s homes, hoarder’s flats and much more.
Some homeowners who decide to sell privately also do so because they don’t want nosey neighbours or others to know that their property is for sale. If a homeowner goes through the traditional route of putting their home on the market, that means their listing – which will include photographs of the interior and exterior of the house or flat, as well as a description of its main features – could end up on easily accessible home sales websites like Rightmove or Zoopla, ending any hope of privacy with the sale.

Potential cons linked with selling a flat or house privately

Although there are many advantages to enjoy when selling your property privately to a home buyer, you could find a handful of disadvantages when dealing with certain companies. When you’re preparing to sell your home, it can be useful to learn about the possible downsides that you might experience when selling privately in order to assist you with avoiding them.
One issue is that the company might make a lower offer for your home compared to what you may be able to get when selling on the market with an auctioneer or estate agent. This in turn would reduce the profit that you could make from the sale. But the good news is that legitimate home buyers, such as LDN Properties, always make competitive offers when buying homes.
Another potential problem is gazundering, which refers to a situation where a quick buyer makes an offer to purchase your flat or house but then at the very last minute before contracts are exchanged they significantly reduce the offer, to benefit from paying less for your home. A quick buyer can do this because many homeowners who sell to these companies want to do so as swiftly as possible, and some sellers may simply accept the lower price to complete the sale.
It’s possible that some home buying companies will claim to not charge any commission when purchasing your property, but they will still make you pay fees for the sale that will effectively take the place of commission. And this would increase your expenses when selling, so if you’re trying to reduce your total costs with selling this could make that harder to achieve.
Always ask specific companies to give you honest and upfront information about any and all fees they will charge a seller, and try to find companies that are honest no-fee quick buyers, including LDN Properties, because this will help with reducing your net selling costs.
Some homeowners might also feel overwhelmed by the prospect of being responsible for reaching out to a property buying company instead of having a third party like an estate agent or auctioneer handle the work, as noted on the Ready Steady Sell website.
But the reality is that this is a zero-hassle, streamlined and stress-free method for selling a home, and the next guide walks you through what to expect when selling using this method so that you can enjoy a swift sale and then move on to owning your next dream property.

What’s the process for successfully selling a home privately?

It’s a very simple process to sell your home privately without putting in on the market and avoiding the services of an estate agent or auctioneer, and the entire process should only take a few short weeks.
To start, reach out to a quick buyer like LDN Properties and ask them to give you a tentative offer for your property. You should receive an offer within the first hour of talking with the company and there’s no rush to make a decision as you’ll have least a week to consider it.
The next stage, if you accept the initial offer, is when the company will send a representative to your home so that they can inspect the interior and exterior, which will inform their final offer.
Then if you agree to the final offer, the quick buyer will move rapidly to work with your solicitor or other legal representative to complete the necessary legal documents required to finalise the sale of your property. The entire timeline should only take a few short weeks and this includes the time needed for the exchange of contracts and then paying you the sale proceeds, making it by far usually the fastest way possible to sell your house or flat.
Selling to a home buyer is therefore a streamlined, hassle-free and zero-stress way to sell almost any type of freehold or leasehold property, particularly when compared to the different strategies of selling via an auctioneer or an estate agent. The next section of this guide details the various benefits and downsides you may experience with these selling choices.

Alternative ways to sell a home beyond doing so privately

The two typical alternatives to selling your property privately are choosing to do so with an auctioneer, or with an estate agent. Whilst there are some advantages to be found with both these methods, there are also some important disadvantages that you should know about.

Selling your property with an auctioneer

Auctioning any type of house or flat is unpredictable because you don’t know in advance if anyone will bid on it, which means the property does not sell. If that happens then you would need to start over with trying to find a buyer, delaying the selling timeline even further.
You might also just get a single bid at the reserve price – this is the lowest price at which you agree your home can sell. This bid is a legally binding agreement that you will sell your home, and the buyer could sue to enforce the sale if you then try to walk away from it.
For this reason, you must ensure to pick a reserve price that should leave some profit from the sale even after accounting for the commission that the auctioneer will charge. If you don’t then you risk either selling at a loss or breaking even by selling at the price you paid for the home.
It’s possible you will be offered two types of auctioning; traditional or modern. If you choose the traditional method then the auctioneer will create a listing for your home and then advertise this to generate interest from buyers before the auction takes place on a set day. If you choose the modern method then your listing will be open to bids 24 hours a day, seven days, for a set amount of time, and the highest bid at the end of the auction is the eventual buyer.
You will need to pay commission when selling your home through an auctioneer if the auction is successful. And as Which? explains, this fee can be at least 2.5 percent of your home’s final sale price, which is often much higher than commission charged by an estate agent.
The fee will increase your overall selling expenses because it will be deducted from the final auction proceeds right away. So for any homeowners whose main goal with selling a property is to reduce their total costs, selling privately would still be a much better, and zero-fee, option.
You might find some auctioneers that are willing to reduce their rate of commission, or have the buyer pay some of your selling costs, so it is always worth asking about these options.
Selling via an auction is also not a rapid process and it involves several long waiting periods, including weeks or more between when you choose to sell using this method and when the auction happens. And then if your home does sell, the buyer typically has about a month to sign all their required legal papers and complete the other steps needed to finalise the sale.
One solution for the length of the process could be asking the auctioneer if they are willing to reduce how much time the buyer has for these after-auction tasks. But note that some auctioneers may give the buyer even more than a month, making for an even slower sale. If you are trying to sell your property on a fast timeline then contacting a home buyer can help.
It’s also helpful to know that if you have a so-called problem property with a structural flaw or other negative issue that might discourage many potential buyers, you could find that certain auctioneers do not have experience or knowledge about how to sell your home. This implies that they will struggle to get people interested in bidding on your property at the auction, which increases the risk that your home might not get any bids and therefore will not sell.
One step to take if you own a problem property is to ask auctioneers if they have ever successfully sold a home like yours previously. You should not sell your property using an auctioneer without such a track record as this suggests they may not be able to sell yours.

Selling your property with an estate agent

Some estate agents are able to assist homeowners with selling privately, which they do by learning about the seller’s priorities, such as their preferred asking price, and they’ll look into their own database of potential buyers and circulate your home’s listing to them.
Yet this is a very unpredictable way to sell a home that has small odds of success, because you’re having to rely on the slim chance that someone in the already-limited database of the estate agent’s private contacts will have a particular interest in purchasing your home.
Instead, most estate agents will pursue the regular tactics for selling a property, which start with creating a listing for your house or flat, advertising this online, in local newspapers and in their office, scheduling viewings for anyone interested and hearing offers from serious buyers. They will also hopefully oversee the successful exchange of contracts and completion of a sale.
For those owners that don’t want to put much work into selling their homes, an estate agent can for these reasons be a good choice because the professional will handle most of the work, meaning you can avoid putting in much effort until you start to get viewings and offers.
This is also far from the fastest way to find a buyer because it can take a number of months, and sometimes even more than a full year, before you will succeed in selling your home. If a quick sale is your priority then selling private to a homebuying company is a better choice.
Just know that a buyer can make an offer on your home but then cause the sale to collapse by withdrawing it, and they are able to do this without the risk of being subject to any penalties if the contracts have not been exchanged. If the sale falls apart it will add much more time to your selling schedule as you would have to restart the process of trying to locate a buyer.
Another downside of selling with an estate agent is that they will charge you fees if they succeed in finding a buyer for your property and the sale is completed. You can expect to pay anywhere from 1.15 percent to 1.40 percent of your home’s sale price in fees, which are subtracted immediately from the sale proceeds.
This will increase your costs, so if you want to keep expenses low, consider other selling options. One such solution is getting in touch with a quick home buyer like LDN Properties that promises not to charge any commission, because you’ll avoid paying any fees at all.
A further concern is that some estate agents might give you an impressive quote for the price at which they claim they can sell your home, even if they secretly understand it will only attract offers at a much lower price. This is done so that you agree to use their services to sell your property, and then the estate agent benefits from the commission they’ll get to charge you. But thankfully there is a fairly simple solution to prevent falling for this particular trick.
It starts by asking several estate agents to provide you with free quotes for the price at which they believe your home can sell. Next, you should go online and look up the current and past sale prices of properties like yours in your area. Finally, calculate the average price from all these values to get a more realistic idea of your property’s potential selling price.
Remember also that when a home is sold through an estate agent, you’ll need to agree to have potentially dozens of viewings where people who are interested in your home get to tour the inside and outside before deciding whether they would like to make an offer on the property. Many owners says that they find these viewings to be very intrusive and time-consuming.
If you choose instead to sell your home to a quick buyer then they only viewing you’ll have to agree to is when a representative from the company comes to your flat or house to assess it.

Top questions about selling your house or flat privately

Because LDN Properties is a quick homebuyer, we’ve received many queries from homeowners about selling privately, and here are our answers to some of the most frequent asks.