Companies who buy your house

[blossom]

Hiya,
our house has been on the market for a year and still hasn't sold. We had a buyer but the chain collapsed.
We have been having problems with one of our neighbours and the stress is getting unbearable. We are also applying for jobs in Australia, so if we get one we would want to be out fairly sharpish.

I have heared about companies who buy your house from you. One web site I looked at said they would give you between 80-90% of the market value of the house. If we took the market value as the offer price then we could live with only 90% of that.

Has anyone had any experiance with these companies? I just really want to get away from my terrible neighbour.

Thanks

[PAULW]

BLOSSOM
Have you tried the housing associasion they some times buy individual houses so they dont end up with an estate of HA houses, not sure what time of year they choose to do these buys but worth a call.

[Alison]

If you're willing to take a lower price for your house then couldn't you just drop the price with the estate agent, that way you might not have to reduce the price so much and would still get a quick sale. I'm a bit dubious about these agencies but that isn't based on any experience, simply my natural caution. I presume you've already tried mithering the estate agents and if that hasn't worked, moved to a different agent?

[Pottypotter]

We used 2 estate agents because then they are competing against each other for a sale.

[smallblueplanet]

Try posting your question on moneysavingexpert.com they've a thread for house buying/selling and often have 'specialists' post.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...play.html?f=16

Using 2 estate agents to compete with each other doesn't always get the desired result. If you have or know an estate agent that is 'reputable' why not try explaining your problem to them and see what they suggest. They might be able to market your property differently and only look for say, cash-buyers at a certain price.

Or what about selling at auction? It is something I have no real knowledge of except that to buy at auction you have to be able to put down 10% deposit there and then and pay the rest within 28 days. This obviously leads to a smaller number of potential buyers and so I would assume a lower sale price? But perhaps you can set a reserve price?

Whatever you do take professional advice, out of interest how much (roughly) is 10-20% of your house's value?

[HappyMouffe]

Blossom, a friend of ours looked at using one of these companies to sell their house quickly - again, on the website it said that you'd get "up to" 80-90% of the value. However, when they looked into it more closely, the company told them the'y get around 65-70% - quite a big drop!

[Pottypotter]

Using 2 estate agents to compete with each other doesn't always get the desired result.

worked for us, we sold within two weeks

[smallblueplanet]

worked for us, we sold within two weeks

Oh well it must work then.

Its hardly as straightforward as getting two agents in, I've sold enough houses using one agent - do they concentrate on selling your house rather than ignoring it cos someone else is selling it?

When we sold our last place in Essex it was on with two agents because it was a more accepted practice where we were. However when we lived in Derby having two agents selling would perhaps have had buyers thinking you needed two agents to sell the house, therefore there must be something wrong with it.

[blossom]

Thanks everyone.
We did try the housing association but they said they don't buy houses anymore. It is them who owns the house we are having problems with, so we thought they might consider it, but no.

We are on our 3rd Estate agent. Funnily the first one who we were with at a higher price got loads of people through the door. They were pants though. We were up for £120k, and had an offer for £100k. We declined, she did try to tell us she was a good buyer as she had no chain, and had already made an offer on another house, but would pull out for our house (BAD BUYER ALERT).
We dropped the price to £115k and had an offer for £112,500 about two weeks later, just as we had handed in our notice with the estate agent. This person told us about a month later (without getting as far as a survey) that their chain had collapsed, but they were still interested. This was in December.
Went with new estate agent at £115k again, had one viewing in 13 weeks, who said they were interested, had not found a buyer for their house, but could get a mortgage anyway. Turns out they couldn't (nothing to do with our house).
Have been with latest one for about 8 weeks and not one viewing. They have told us to drop the price after about another week.

I must admit if I see a house with two boards I wander why one company can't sell it. And they charge a fair bit more % if you use two around here.

Maybe dropping the price by a fair bit would be the best way. It is on at £112,500 at the mo.

Thanks again, it is such a pain in the bottom.

[laura g]

Has your neighbourly dispute gotten serious? has anything been logged with police/council etc etc? Dont want to be a prophet of doooom but there's a duty to disclose any problems with neighbours these days - could affect your sale.

We sold a buy to let last year. Lots of viewers but early ones put off because although it was a nice ground floor garden flat, upstairs lived three twentysomething lads. Great guys, typical youngsters and we had no problems with them but not first choice as neighbours for lots of buyers. Time was ticking so I looked at the companies that buy - completely legit but will offer nothing like 90%.

Go with them and you will end up giving it away to them. You'd be better off swapping your mortgage to a buy to let and renting the property out - you'd probably find the HA or local council will give you a years guaranteed letting contract with money up front quarterly and the assurance that they would put right any damage at the end of the term.

However if you have to sell, I'd pop a lineage ad in the local paper and go on a few self sell websites. Check your agents contract though - dont want to end up paying a fee to them anyway.

Getting a result at auction depends on where you are and the type of property; who it will appeal to. Deffo worth finding out more.

I know how desperate you must be getting. It took more than a year, start to finish for us to move. Getting shot of the BTL (only ever bought for my mum to live in anyway) and the family home which was a huge but pretty unattractive money pit. You start feeling sick. of the situation and of living in a kind of limbo. I couldnt face buying again so we didnt. Am renting and tbh am utterly happy and have no inclination to be saddled with a giant mortgage for the foreseaable. If something goes wrong with this place: I report it and it gets fixed. If things change and it doesnt suit: I will move. At my pace and not at the mercy of buyers and estate agents and surveyors etc etc etc. The sense of relief is brilliant.

Hope things get better for you.

ps just thought: i've seen advertised new home builders buying old homes...sure they have to make their shekels but could be a better deal option??? assuming you want a new home but then again you said you were off to Oz??

[Nicos]

Have you considered selling on the internet? Or in the local paper???
Seems to be getting a more popular way of doing it these days.

[Pottypotter]

I must admit if I see a house with two boards I wander why one company can't sell it. And they charge a fair bit more % if you use two around here.

Because we didn't want our bad neighbours to know our house was up for sale (didn't want any trouble or noise when people were viewing) We didn't have any boards up. LOL The look on there faces on the day we moved out.

I can only presume that because we got the estate agent quotes before telling them that there would be more than one selling we didn't pay any extra.

Good Luck with selling yours, hope you get a sale soon.