Within hours of contacting us you will be given a preliminary offer for your property. This first offer is based on property trends and the local market. Within days a formal valuation, at no cost to you, will be carried out and from that a firm cash offer for your property will be made. We consider buying any type of property in the United Kingdom – flats, houses and bungalows – in any condition.
If you accept this offer we will quickly instruct solicitors to take the sale forward. We will cover any solicitor fees and there are no estate agent fees.
At this stage the sale is guaranteed by us – this means you will not lose us as your buyer. The sale will only cease if you change your mind about selling. As we buy your property direct there are no chains – we are 100% cash purchasers.
There is only a small amount of paperwork for you to complete and you can use any solicitor if you prefer. Some sales can be completed in under a week and the average is around four weeks - but we can work to any time frame you choose.
We have lots of very experienced valuers in-house who use internet-based systems to quickly give you a valuation - quicker than anyone else in the market can. This valuation will then be used to provide you with an initial offer. In the next couple of days we will send out a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) independent surveyor to view your property and check it for any structural problems or any other issues there might be. The surveyor will then provide us with a formal valuation and this will be used to give you a firm offer. This survey is carried out at no cost to you.
Once you have received and accepted this offer this is the price we will use to buy your property.
When selling through the traditional estate agent route there are two prices – the price your house is marketed at and the price someone is willing to pay for your property. Sometimes the price someone is willing to pay is greater than the price it’s marketed at, but often it’s below the asking price. On top of this you need to factor in estate agent and solicitor fees.
At Reader’s Digest Property we take all of this into consideration when giving you an offer for your property. The offer will almost certainly be below any asking price valuation you would receive from an estate agent, however you won’t pay any estate agent and solicitor fees. And, as we are able to move the sale along quickly, you may also have less to pay out in mortgage repayments and bills while you wait. This means the price we pay is often only around 7.5% lower than the amount you would benefit from through using a traditional estate agent.
The table below sets out the costs of selling through Reader’s Digest Property and selling through a traditional estate agent…
Selling to Reader’s Digest Property (3 days+) |
Selling via estate agent (6 months+) |
|
|---|---|---|
Asking price |
£100,000 |
£100,000 |
Average agreed purchase price |
£75,000 |
£95,000 |
Final agreed price after survey |
£75,000 |
£90,000 |
Estate agent fees |
£0 |
£1,900+VAT |
Cosmetic repairs needed |
£0 |
£750 |
Solicitor fees |
£0 |
£1,000 |
Council tax and other bills (while sale is going through) |
£150 |
£1,800 |
Mortgage payments (while sale is going through) |
£0 |
£3,600 |
Net price achieved |
£74,850* |
£80,950* |
*These figures are for guidance only, individual sums can vary.
