How do we value your home?

Three Things You Need To Know

We wrote this article to show you exactly how our Valuation Process works - but there are three crucial things you need to know about it first.

1. It’s free - Our valuation process is completely free – it won’t cost you a penny.
2. There’s no obligation - If we value your home, there’s no obligation for you to accept.
3. It’s designed to be fair, and accurate - Some homeowners are concerned that a company will try to under-value their house to justify making you a lower offer. While this may be true for some companies, it’s not in our interest to work that way, and we don’t work that way.

Simply put, we’re here to buy property – we have the funds available to buy, and we want to buy as many houses as possible. And we know that the more money we can offer for your house, the more likely it is that you can accept our offer.

After all, if our offer is too low, you can just reject it and walk away at no cost, and we’d lose the business.

So our valuation process is set up to try and build a true picture of how much your house is worth, so that we can offer you our best price possible, and we’ve got the best chance possible of agreeing a sale with you.

Our 5-Step Valuation Process

There’s a simple 5-step process to us getting your home valued, and making you a formal offer on your home in the next few days.

Scroll further down the page to read more about each step in detail.

1. Free Offer Calculation - First, a member of our team will give you an idea of what our offer may be over the phone, and you can decide whether or not you'd like to go further.
2. Desktop research to verify the illustration - Our teams verify the details used in the calculation to check for any discrepancies.
3. Two local estate agent valuations - We instruct two local estate agents near you to visit your home, at a time to suit you, to value your home and provide feedback.
4. Final research phase - We process the agent feedback and do more research to formulate our offer.
5. We make our formal offer - We’ll contact you to go through the findings, and make our Formal Offer for you to consider.

Free Offer Calculation

The best thing choosing us to selling your house fast is that it guarantees you a quick, guaranteed and stress-free house sale. The only drawback is that we buy at a price less than its full value.

How much less? In just a few minutes our team can take a bit of information about your home including a rough estimation of what you think it may be worth, and we’ll be able to give you an approximate offer calculation based on your information.

One useful thing to bear in mind when thinking about our offer is how it compares to the final price you'd receive after selling through a local estate agent. Remember there are direct costs (estate agents and solicitor fees) as well as many indirect costs (mortgage payments, council tax and utility bills, and so on while you're waiting to move) – which not everyone considers when thinking about the cost of selling.

At this point, if you’re not happy with our offer calculation then there’s no need or pressure or obligation to go any further with us. It was worth a look!

What do I do if I’m happy with your calculation?

If you’re happy with the figures we'll move to the next stage.

Desktop Research

If you're happy with the offer calculation we discussed over the phone, we start the valuation phase;

Valuation Software - We use sophisticated valuation software to examine your local market, area, and recent comparable house sales nearby. This “desktop valuation” is useful for seeing how accurate the figures from the original calculation are likely to be.

Checking The Illustration For Accuracy - If there are any red flags and it looks like our offer might be quite a way away from the original offer calculation then we’ll let you know – and you can decide whether or not you’d like to proceed any further. Again, this conversation and research is all done free of charge for you and with no obligation – so you can change your mind at any point.

Hopefully, the information we find online will help verify the figures already discussed, and we’ll move to Stage 3 – the local Estate Agent valuations.

Two Local Estate Agent Valuations

If you’re happy with the offer calculation discussed up to this point, we begin work on making you a formal offer. A formal offer is the figure the sale goes through at – the actual amount that reaches your bank account on completion, minus any mortgage you have to pay.

To do this we need to establish the “Full Market Value” of your property. This is the rough price you’d generally expect to achieve after around 4-8 months if selling on the open market with an estate agent. The offer we make is based on this figure – so we need as accurate an idea as possible of what your home would likely sell for on the open market, so that we can offer you the best price possible.

To get this accurate valuation, we instruct two local estate agents from your area to meet you at your property at a time suit you, have a quick look around, and to complete a valuation report for us.

Why do we use local estate agent valuations?

1. Fair and Impartial - Using independent agents ensures a fair, impartial valuation. Some house-buying or part-exchange companies send out sales reps or their own “valuers” to view your house – but this creates a conflict of interest. So we use independent, local estate agents only.
2. Local Experts - Local estate agents are the local experts. There’s been a rise in online estate agents over the last few years, and while their fees are less there’s still no doubting that local high-street agents have the best local market knowledge – and that’s what’s most important in the valuation process.
3. Familiar To You - The agents who come to visit will be locally known, you’ll be familiar with seeing their boards from around your local area, and you may even have met them before. It’s much nicer meeting someone local at your home rather than a sales rep from elsewhere in the country.

What happens at the valuation appointments?

Each appointment will only last around 15 minutes.

The estate agent will arrive at your home and introduce themselves, then spend a bit of time walking through your home.

The way property valuations work is they’re all based on “sold comparables” – which are homes nearby that have recently sold and share similar characteristics with your own. So the agent will be getting familiar with your home, gauging its size and condition and so on, and noting how it compares to other recent sales.

They’ll take a few pictures of your home as well while they’re there, and within 15 minutes or so they’ll say their goodbyes and head back to their office.

Back at their desk they’ll spend some time researching similar comparable sales, and producing a report for us showing what they think the property is worth, and why.

Once they’re finished, they’ll send their report through to us, along with any photos taken.

Underwriting Stage

Once we receive the feedback from both agents, we’ll compile it in our software system and review the pictures taken.

We can assess the quality and credibility of each valuation, look at the comparables provided, and take note of parts of their reports that are of particular interest (for example, that the market is functioning particularly well at the moment, or that properties in your area are particularly of higher or lower demand).

We spend a great deal more time fact-checking the information the agents have provided, and our final offer is signed off by one of the underwriting team. Once that’s done, we’re able to contact you to make our offer.

We Make Our Formal Offer

Once our underwriters have reviewed all the feedback and signed off on a Formal Offer, we’ll be able to contact you to go through it in depth.

We’re completely open with the feedback we’ve had, including the two reports from the local estate agents, and we’ll explain the reasoning behind our offer.

Click here to read the full, in-depth guide about how much we offer. 

Do I have to make a decision right away?

No – we’re not pushy and don’t need you to make a decision right away. The idea of our service is to put you back in control of your house sale – so there’s no pressure from us to make a decision quickly.

Once we’ve made our offer we leave it on the table, and you can contact us at your convenience to let us know if you’d like to go ahead. And if you don’t want to, just let us know that too – we can close your case down and part ways, it’s no problem. It costs you nothing to get this far, it’ll have caused very little hassle, and even if you don’t find your buyer from going through the valuation process with us, we guarantee you a good deal of insight and some helpful advice from our team of experts. And we'll still be willing to buy your home if you change your mind later.

What if I do want to accept your offer?

If you’re happy with the offer then just let us know and we can move onto the next stage – getting the solicitors instructed and agreeing a completion date to work towards.

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