We Buy Essex Houses

We've helped people in the following situations where a quick hassle free sale of their home has allowed them to get on with their lives

- Redundancy
- Down-sizing
- Broken Chain
- Emigrating
- Tired landlord
- Poor investment
- Struggling business
- Probate sale
- Facing repossession
- Financial Difficulties
- Divorce / Separation
- Normal process too slow
- Unhappy with Estate Agent
- Relocating (new job)

So if one of these situations is familiar to you please get in touch to see if we can help - a quick email or phone call is al it takes and costs you nothing to try.

Indeed, even if you just want to pick our brains about a property related matter we'd be happy to try and help, and hopefully you won't feel its a waste of your time.

Best way to sell your home

Here at We Buy Essex Houses we are often asked the question “What is the best way to sell my home?”. Since we offer free advice and the benefit of our experiences in buying and selling homes our opinion seems to be valued by our past, present and future customers.

Our answer is dependant on what is meant by “Best”.

Quickest way to sell your home

Where best means quickest, then a quick property cash buyer is often a good solution. Many companies operating this way can often complete transactions in 4 - 6 weeks (our record is 13 days) - beating the average time taken to sell using an estate agent by 2 - 3 months. They will often make you an offer and if you accept will get the process under way within hours. With property buyers that work this way there is no chain to consider and often they have the finances and legal process all ready to go as soon as a price is agreed. This significantly reduces the time that is common with a normal purchase of several months, though the downside is that such companies will probably want to pay less than full market value for your home.

Cheapest way to sell your home

Where best means cheapest, then a quick property cash buyer is often a good solution, as many such companies don’t charge any fees. The next cheapest is probably selling your home yourself using many of the private sellers websites, though this require more time and effort on your part, but a sale can be made for advertising for as a little as £99.

Both of these methods enable you to sell your home without having to pay the huge agent fees, which can be several thousand pounds. The downside of the former is that the property buyer may not pay the full market value, and with selling it yourself you have to put the time and effort in yourself to sell your own home.

Get the best price for your home

Where best means best price, then using an estate agent is often a good place to start since they work for you, the seller, and commissions are normally based on sales price, so it’s in the interests to get as much as possible for your property. However, the downside is that this often means the property can be sitting on the market for some time while you wait for the perfect buyer to come along with the price you are looking for.

Some property buyers, like us, can also offer full price for your property. The trade off here is that we would typically look to pay for the property over time, so that you get your money and the price you want, it’s just that the amount is spread over a period of time. Call us for more details.

House Prices Predictions

House prices are a topic of conversation in the UK much like the weather.

There are those who believe house prices are set to fall massively, those that think the price rises will soon return and those of us who pretend not to care.

At We Buy Essex Houses we don’t try to predict the future. We assess things on the basis of today and if you need to sell your house today, that’s really we all need to be concerned with.

However, it’s always interesting to look at predications and get the views of others.

The chap in the video below certainly believes we haven’t seen the worst yet…

Selling Your Home Using An Estate Agent

When you need to sell your home the first (and often the only) approach people think of is using an estate agent. However, using an estate agent needs some careful consideration, and probably should be weighed up against other options which include the following:

selling the house yourself (common in US and Austrailia) as “For Sale By Owner”
selling the house using a private selling website such as thelittlehousecompany
selling your house at auction - either a traditional one or via an online property auction site
selling to a professional local house buyer (Such as webuyessexhouses.co.uk)
letting your property out instead of selling it

Using Estate Agents

If however, you are keen to use the traditional method of using an estate agent to sell your home, then ask friends, colleagues and/or family for any recommendations they might have. Ask them which estate agents they have used and why and what the feedback was. Also consider how recent this information is and get a name of a particular person if possible (it’s common to have a very good individual in a generally average estate agency).

Get a number of agents to value your home and get them to back up their opinions with real evidence of recent comparable sales. Ask them what price your property would need to be on the market at to achieve a firm sale in 4 weeks. This will give you a good idea of true value and may help by-pass the usual tactic of over valuing your property to win your business and then request you drop the price a few weeks later. Ask them what improvements could be made to add appeal to potential buyers, ask them about their experience of properties in your area and on your road - and get them to prove it!

Be challenging. Test their claims that they have “the ideal buyers waiting” by asking them how many viewings they can achieve within 2 weeks and that you can cancel the contract if they fail to achieve that number.

Get to understand who you will be dealing with in the office on a day to day basis. Often the person who comes to value your house won’t be looking after your sale, so check out who will be and meet them. You could even pose as a buyer for the estate agent you are thinking about using and see what you think of the service from a buyers point of view.

Contracts, Terms and Pricing

Agents will like to tie you in to a contract, more often than not requesting that you only list with them (sole agency). Contracts can vary and will be legally binding, with agents able to sue if you breach any of the terms. It may be worth getting the advice of a solicitor or asking at your local citizens advice bureau if you are unsure about what you are signing up to. Beware also that agents will tend to price their fee as a percentage of the sales price. This is because 1.5% sounds a lot less than £3,000 which is what 1.5% is of £200,000. So do the maths and check you are comfortable with the fee. And don’t forget, VAT will be added, and this example that will add a further £450 to your bill.

One approach may be to offer the agent a higher fee for a sale in the first 4 weeks to incentivise them, and then have a reducing fee scale for sales that occur towards the end of the contract.

Regulation, Complaints and Disputes

A useful website page to visit on these matters is provided by the department of Business Innovation and Skills click here

In essence Estate Agents are bound by the Estate Agents Act, though some are also registered with and bound by the terms of various trade organisations, the main ones of which are;

National Association of Estate Agents - NAEA
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors - RICS
Guild of Professional Estate Agents - GPEA

If you don’thave any luck selling through an Estate Agent, then why not try a professional local property buyer like us here at We Buy Essex Houses?

Useful Links

- Making A Compliant about an Estate Agent from direct.gov.uk

- All about Home Information Packs (HIPs) see HIPs - A Seller’s Guide

Sell and Rent Back

Beware of companies offering to buy your home and rent it back to you, so called “sell and rent back”.

From July 2009, Sell and Rent Back schemes are being regulated and companies offering sell and rent back have to comply with various rules and requirements to ensure sellers are treated fairly and are given all the information before making an informed decision as to whether sell and rent back is the right solution for them.

A number of scams have been reported where sell and rent back companies buy the home and then evict the sellers shortly afterwards - or sometimes raise the rents to extortionate levels. Some offer some of the price for the house now and some in 10 years time, but whether they will ever pay that amount remains to be seen.

There are some good sell and rent back providers out there. We suggest you research the market, get competing quotes and get legal advice. Also check with the sell and rent back company you are dealing with is appropriately authorised and regulated. Sell and rent back can be a useful solution in certain circumstances, but it isn’t the right or only solution for everyone.

WeBuyEssexHouses does not offer a sell and rent back solution, but we can offer to buy your home so you can move on elsewhere.

Futher information and reports on regulation of the sell and rent back industry can be found by clicking here

HM Treasury have now published the order enabling statutory regulation and the interim regime is expected to be in place by 1 July 2009. The FSA have also published the rules for the interim regime.

Should You Sack Your Estate Agent?

Here at We Buy Essex Houses we are constantly amazed at how many sellers are really fed up with their Estate Agents. Sellers complain that their agents give poor customer service and fail to communicate and give regular updates, resulting in being left with a feeling of being completely out of control and at the point of despair. And still the agents want their extortionate commission.

Does this sound familiar to you?

We hope not. But don’t get us wrong, there are some good Essex estate agents out there, but unfortunately they are in the minority it seems. Next to traffic wardens and (more recently) city bankers and MPs, estate agents have to be up there in the most despised professions!

The growth of private seller websites such as www.thelittlehousecompany.co.uk and www.houseladder.co.uk is a testament to the frustrations of sellers with poor estate agent customer service and high fees for seemingly doing very little.

The fact is estate agents tend to resort to two measures when your house hasn’t sold. One is to convince you to drop the price and the other is to suggest you rent the property out until the market picks up. Often neither of these options is attractive or possible, but sellers often feel left with little choice, end up compromising and still pay a large commission for the privilege.

Some try the private seller websites which gives great satisfaction that agents and their hefty commissions are out of the way, while others look for the cash buyer and sell your house fast private ads in local newspapers, flyers and websites. Both of these allow sellers to sack their estate agents, but the downside is the former comes with the hassle of calls and viewings, while the latter often means you have to take a big hit on the price you are looking for.

At We Buy Essex Houses, we aim to help identify what it is you really need from the sale of your house and see if we can find a way to get that. This is based on what really lies behind a house sale. Often it is to make a gain (e.g. selling for the cash bit left in the house to do something else, which may or may not involve buying another house), or it is to avoid a pain (i.e. getting rid of debt and high mortgage and loan payments, or in the case of divorce, severing financial links with the ex).

So if your property is listed with an estate agent and they are really not getting the job done, why not think about some alternatives?

If you have a spare couple of minutes, why not fill out the enquiry form and we’ll do our best to help.