Nottingham is a wonderful city in the Midlands region with a strong feel for culture and art. That positivity is also reflected in the busy, ever-changing property market. This is all well and good, but what about if you want to move either within the city or out of it altogether? What are your best options?
In this article we’ll explore the ways of selling your house, mainly what selling your home to a cash buyer actually looks like, whether it’s worth doing, some of the advantages and disadvantages as well as how to choose a reputable option.
Selling to a cash buyer might be a great, and convenient option for a speedy solution – but it might not work for everyone.
To know whether it’s right for you, it may seem like a simple question, but what exactly is a cash buyer? Simply put, if you were looking to sell your Nottingham property, then a cash buyer would be someone who is offering funds they already have within their bank account for your property, not relying on that of a mortgage, these can be either people or businesses that work on the cash property buying model.
As a seller, selling to a cash buyer is ideal, it generally allows you to sell far quicker than to a standard buyer which can be extremely advantageous if your circumstance dictates it. If you can find a cash buyer on your home, it’s the fastest option you will have to sell your property.
On the flip side, being a cash buyer allows you a certain preferential position. Mortgage approvals take time, and a large majority of the time of the sale/purchase process at that, so compared to the general market you have a unique. Time is money though, and cash buyers can often leverage this to get a discount against the market value when buying your home.
So whether or not you use a cash buyer, is essentially the trade-off of how much your time is worth, time vs money.
That depends on your appetite for a quick sale, selling to a cash buyer does have a lot of benefits including a significantly increased speed of sale. As mentioned though, they will typically want a discount on the overall price due to their leveraged position, but is it worth it?
It would come down to what offer you could get, but let's say they want a 20% discount on your property. Let’s for ease take a £100k house, through a cash buy option that would mean they offer you £80,000 for a quick sale.
If you went with that same property down a traditional route, marketing the property at £100,000, you’re unlikely to get that – so you accept an offer of £95,000. When you remove the cost of the post-survey negotiations, estate agent fees, solicitors fees, mortgage payments of the duration of your being in the property, bills, council tax and clearing the property then the amount at the end may be similar to that of a cash sale.
Now you may be thinking, well on a cash sale I still have to consider solicitors fees – but that’s not necessarily true if you pick a cash house-buying company, they often cover them.
When Selling your Nottingham property, on your side of things, the process is pretty similar to a more traditional sale apart from the fact the buyer doesn’t need to arrange a mortgage. It essentially means there’s one less, rather large hoop, to jump through.
Other than that step, the rest of the steps are still the same, and the same due diligence in terms of from a solicitor and any surveys are still a standard part of the process.
You can get lucky, list your house on the market and attract a cash buyer – but we stress this would be extremely lucky, as most cash buyers are seasoned investors or companies that look off-market to get the best deals.
So what are your options, how do you get that quick sale? One of the most common ways of achieving a cash sale is to use a cash house-buying company, like ourselves. There are several companies to choose from in this space, but we would recommend that you do your due diligence, read the reviews and check companies house to ensure you are dealing with a professional outfit.
Sometimes if you are using an estate agent they may have an exclusive list of potential cash buyers that they can activate in your local area, generally customers who they have worked with multiple times and trust. This isn’t every estate agent so you may need to shop around, and they may well charge you a premium to access this list.
Now hopefully you know the options you have when it comes to selling your Nottingham property for cash, we’ll now go into whether you should – highlighting the advantages and disadvantages, so lets take a look at both sides of the coin:
This is the main reason you would choose to use a cash buyer like ourselves, is simply because you want your sale to move fast. Generally cash buyers are a lot quicker because they don’t require the mortgage element, but cash house buying companies are also faster due to their relationships with solicitors and survey companies that dramatically cuts down the overall transaction time.
Another significant appeal to selling to a cash house buyer is they’re not in a chain. They don’t require the sale of their property in order to buy yours, which again can slow the sale significantly. It also means there is a significant reduction in the chance of the sale falling through because of issues outside of the buyers control.
As a seller, if your house has issues like a short lease, Japanese Knotweed, or even lacks a kitchen – it could be considered unmortgageable, which rules out a large part of the market. It doesn’t however rule out cash buyers, they can buy anything, as long as they are happy with it.
Not only does the mortgage step take a long time, but there’s a chance that it could go wrong and the mortgage doesn’t get approved for whatever reason. If you are dealing with a cash buyer then they don’t have this potential uncertainty.
Now we would hope this doesn’t happen if you are selling to a company as you can do a lot of research around them and their legitimacy but if you choose an independent cash buyer you do need to take extra care. This is something you should talk to your solicitor about and make them aware of when instructing them.
It may not always be true, but most cash buyers are savvy and have been in the market for some time – and they know they are in a good position when buying your home, so typically that results in an offer below market value.
We’ve alluded to the fact that you can choose a company, like ourselves, to sell your Nottingham property to for cash – but how do you check the company that you’re talking to is reputable & that you’re not going to get scammed.
We’re cash buyers and our mission is to make selling your property easier because we believe selling shouldn’t be time-consuming or complicated. We’re the UK’s leading property solutions company, with our approach to buying your property we can cater for a variety of different sale situations based on your required timescale.
If you need to sell your Nottingham property, it’s really simple to get started with us, and we can buy it in as little as 7 days! All you have to do is enter your postcode, answer a few questions about your property, and have a quick chat with one of our consultants who will be able to provide you with a provisional cash offer – it doesn’t cost you anything but a little bit of your time.
We operate across the whole of England & Wales, including everywhere in Nottingham, so no matter where your property is based in or around the area, we can help. We commonly get enquiries for the Nottingham area, and here are a few of the main ones:
Hyson Green
Bilborough
Bulwell
Radford
Sneinton
Clifton
Old Basford
Forest Fields
West Bridgford
Ruddington