Looking to sell your property fast but not sure who to trust? Complete our contact form
Looking to sell your property fast but not sure who to trust? Complete our contact form
Critical Analysis:
When you’re selling your property, it’s of vital importance to know who you’re working with.
In here, you’ll find everything you need to know about Estates UK and whether you should trust them to sell your property quickly and whether they’ll give you an optimal price.
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Company
Established in
1998
Members of NAPB
Yes
Members of TPO
Yes
Registered with ICO
Yes
Approved by CTSI
Yes
Will “Estates UK” pay all of your legal fees?
Yes
Do they ask you to sign a contract?
No
Government verified transactions
Yes
Cash offer
Average sale time
7 days
Fastest sale time
Not stated
Availability
Office hours 9-5 Monday to Friday
Complaints procedure
Yes
Customer service
3.8 / 5
Google rating
3.4 / 5 (35 reviews)
Trustpilot rating
N / A
Reviews.co.uk rating
N / A
Feefo rating
N / A
4 / 5
(source: Companies House)
Estates UK is a quick property buying company that claims to be a cash buyer.
They have almost 40years of experience and can sell your property in the usual 7 days fast time frame.
The company claims to have no additional fees and say that they will buy your home at a ‘good price’ using their own cash reserves.
Estates UK claim to buy homes in any condition – even if ‘they need some TLC’.
Whether all of that’s true, will be revealed in this review.
When working with them, they’ll buy the property from you at a price that satisfies both parties involved, and then sell it for a profit.
You’ll get a slightly below-market price but you’ll achieve a prompt and effortless sale with little paperwork.
Estates UK provides free cash offers, doesn’t seem to have estate agent or solicitors fees and guarantees the sale of any property in any condition.
They can give you a no-obligation quote in just 24 hours, following a home visit and valuation, and will purchase your property in as little as 7 days.
This type of sale is perfect for people in a rush, who don’t have time for unnecessary red tape.
Estates UK say they have been buying houses in the Hull, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire area since 1985.
Estates UK seem to not rely on mortgage finance to buy properties which allows them to complete property sales at a much faster rate.
Estates UK appears to have no hidden charges and no legal fees.
However, they are not a dedicated house buying company, but offer the service as part of a larger business which also rents homes.
It should also be noted that despite their name, Estates UK are not a national operation, covering the whole of the UK, but instead focus their property buying on Hull, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
Yes, Estates UK is a member of NAPB.
The National Association of Property Buyers (NAPB) was specifically set up to protect homeowners looking to sell their houses for cash to a property buying company.
The NAPB continuously screens its members in order to see whether they’re maintaining the necessary business integrity, legality, professionalism and customer service.
It’s mandatory for all NAPB members to also register with The Property Ombudsman (TPO) and abide by the TPO ‘Code of Practice For Residential Buying Companies’.
However, being an NAPB member itself, is completely voluntary. Nobody forces these cash home buyers to become members, they do it of their own volition.
Inferring from this, we can postulate that Estates UK is proactive and are genuinely looking out for the interests of their customers.
Yes, Estates UK is a member of TPO.
The Property Ombudsman (TPO) defends the interests of the public by investigating and addressing complaints of maladministration or a violation of rights.
It has been providing consumers and property agents with an alternative dispute resolution service since 1990.
TPO has a specific category for fast home sale companies, such as Estates UK.
These companies have to adhere to a strict ‘Code of Practice for Residential Buying Companies’.
Estates UK is regulated by TPO and strictly follows the above mentioned TPO code of conduct.
Yes, Estates UK are registered with the ICO and appear to take data and privacy issues very seriously.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the UK’s independent regulatory body set up to uphold information rights.
The ICO also governs all forms of data collection and advertising intelligence.
By being registered with the ICO, Estates UK has to protect its customers’ data at all times.
The ICO also has a Free Online Checker where you can verify whether a company is registered with them or not.
Estates UK are GDPR compliant and have extensive information on their website concerning their cookie policy, their privacy policy and their data retention policy.
This is an impressive level of customer data care for a house buyer.
Estates UK claim to have ‘cash reserves waiting to ensure that there are no delays’.
Our team of investigators found one of their investment vehicles within Companies House.
This allowed us to validate that they do have over 400 government-verified transactions, however, the most recent of these is dated December 2012.
That’s why we cannot state for certain whether or not Estates UK currently have cash on hand.
This could be simply due to the fact that they are using a different company name to track and register their other Companies House transactions.
In general, we’ve discovered that very few fast home-buying companies actually have disposable cash on hand.
Most of them are unregulated small businesses or worse – individual opportunists pretending to be big organisations who deliberately mislead.
These companies don’t have their own cash but attempt to raise funds by low-balling their offer and getting finance off the back of the difference between their offer and the market value.
For this reason, it’s less risky to work with home buying companies that have government verified transactions.
Yes, Estates UK have traded for more than 5 years.
The company was registered in 1998 and they claim to have been buying homes locally since 1985.
We use the ‘over/under 5 years trading time’ as a metric to gauge whether a company is an established entity with a lot of experience under their belt or just a newly founded business that may have ulterior motives.
Not all newly formed companies are scams but it’s still important to check how long they have traded.
If they’ve traded for more than 5 years, then this is a minor but still a notable vote of confidence.
Estates UK do not mention their usual offer price on their website, beyond claiming to offer a ‘good price’. That means it is difficult to compare them to other house buyers. If their offers were competitive, you would expect them to boast about this on their website.
Since Estates UK claim to buy your home within 7days of you accepting their offer, this suggests that their average offer price is going to be lower than the industry average of 80-85%, though we cannot confirm this.
Fast house sales within 7days are a bigger risk for the buyer, as they do not have time to complete the full range of surveys and searches required for due diligence. To cover the increased risk, you will normally be offered less for your home if you want to sell this fast.
You may get a better offer if you are prepared to wait a few weeks until the buyer is more certain about your property value.
Getting 70-80%% of the market value for your property when working with a fast home selling company is fair.
We’ve discovered that with sub-par home buying companies you’ll often get between 60 – 65% and sometimes even less.
However, Estates UK doesn’t have any estate agent or legal fees to pay, so there are no fees or costs to deduct from your cash offer. You’ll also avoid all the paperwork, stress and hassle of selling through an estate agent.
According to the latest Statista research, the average number of days taken to sell property in UK from September 2018 to November 2020 is 65 days.
This includes selling properties via estate agents, actions, fast-sale companies and everything else under the sun.
Again, this graph represents every single method of selling a property, combined together.
And because of the vast number of fast home sale companies in the UK, this number is considerably lower than what it would’ve been if it only were estate agents and actions.
Remember when it comes to speed of sale, nothing beats a quick home buying company:
Estates UK claim to be able to buy your home in just seven days, with their own cash funds speeding up the transaction.
Supporting a charity is by no means proof that the home buying company in question is necessarily ‘good’.
In fact, dodgy home buying companies might purposefully support and/or pretend to support a charity just to win brownie points and credibility in the eyes of the customer.
All that being said, it’s still important to acknowledge when a company cash home buyer genuinely supports a charitable cause.
We didn’t find any charitable initiatives which Estates UK supports.
Nevertheless, some companies prefer to donate privately or anonymously rather than stating it publicly.
We didn’t find anything that raises suspicion during our thorough research of Estates UK.
Our investigators sifted through all of the data and legal records of Estates UK and everything was clean.
However, we’ll redact this at the first glimpse of dodgy practices.
We never stop researching and our unbending commitment to excellence doesn’t waver.
This paragraph is only valid up until the ‘Last Updated’ date of this review, which can be found at the top of this page.
As far as we are aware, Estates UK haven’t received any additional awards or prizes.
They haven’t won any competitions either.
There’s nothing more we could add.
To assess the overall user experience (UX) of Estates UK.co.uk we first analysed their website for ease of use and intuitiveness.
They make it very easy to get a free quote/cash offer for your property. They will make an offer within 24 hours, however it is worth noting that this is after they have arranged a home visit / valuation, so your actual offer may take several days depending on your / their availability.
They do not have a freephone number, but there is a phone line available 9 – 5 Monday to Friday. Alternatively, there is a contact form on the website, or you can text them to request a call back.
We calculated their First Response Time (FTR) by messaging them at approximately 2:30 PM on a non-holiday weekday (on a Wednesday to be exact) and used a stopwatch to estimate how long it took them to respond.
Estates UK responded in 1 minute and 12 seconds.
Which is much faster than the industry average. And a fast FTR is something we consider highly important, especially in this sector.
A faster response time suggests that the home-selling company is better equipped to deal with customer queries.
And if they’re better equipped to deal with customer queries, then it means they’re investing their resources where it matters the most.
It’s rare to see a customer-centric cash home buyer and the more we research Estates UK, the more they appear to be such.
We also asked if they offer some sort of ‘Client Satisfaction Guarantee’, and if yes, what would that guarantee consist of.
They currently don’t offer a Client Satisfaction Guarantee but they’re happy to help resolve any issues and problems, within reason, as soon as possible.
Also, they did go out of their way and offered additional help and advice which warrants acknowledgement.
Estates UK have a very thorough internal formal complaints procedure which is detailed on their website. You can also submit a complaint through The Property Ombudsman as Estates UK are a TPO member.
Every TPO member agrees to The Property Ombudsman Code Of Practice which allows customers to file complaints against TPO members, if needed.
Estates UK’s open approach to feedback is impressive. Any fast home buying company should have a formal complaints procedure on their website, as this shows that they are willing to listen and if possible, rectify any problems that may arise.
A legitimate quick home buying company that does what it promises shouldn’t have a problem letting you speak to their past customers.
Of course they need to have the permission of the individual involved and provide some kind of proof that it is a genuine past client of theirs.
We strongly encourage all our readers to ask to speak to a past client.
In this section, we’ll discuss what the public thinks of Estates UK and what online reviews the company has received.
Keep in mind that online reviews can be easily faked.
It works both ways.
The company in charge might hire fake review writers to write positive reviews.
Or on the other hand, their competitors might hire fake review writers to write negative reviews and tarnish the said company’s reputation.
Also, social media followers can be artificially inflated.
That’s why we deem this section as purely anecdotal.
Nonetheless, we use trained researchers with a sceptical eye to go through Estates UK’s social media presence and online reviews.
Sadly, we were unable to find any listings for Estates UK with Google, Trustpilot, Reviews.co.uk or Feefo
We could find no media mentions of the company in the press or on TV
We didn’t find anything suspicious with Estates UK’s social media, TV and online presence, nor with their customer reviews.
We also didn’t find anything suspicious with their domain rating and backlink profile nor their unique monthly search traffic.
Estates UK is a long-established property company operating in the Hull, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire areas. They combine property letting with buying and selling of homes and are not a specialist homebuyer like some of the other companies in the sector.
We thoroughly examined their strengths and weaknesses, user experience (UX), customer service and overall online presence.
Estates UK are members of the NAPB and TPO, and they are registered with the ICO.
They do not say what price or percentage they offer for homes, but they do claim to provide a sale within seven days at a ‘good price’.
The Google reviews for Estates UK are mixed, with both glowing five-star reviews and damning one-star reviews. Although to be fair, many of these are for the lettings side of the business not their homebuying service.
They do have a good complaints procedure both internal and external via The Property Ombudsman.
We will be continuously updating this review as we do with all of our other content. If Estates UK decide to alter, amend or modify something, then we’ll make sure to adjust our critique and score accordingly.
We want to help out as many people as possible. That’s why we created this comprehensive, in-depth Estates UK review.
If you are looking to sell your property extremely fast, message us through the live chat or send us an email.
Depending on your preference and circumstances, we’ll connect you for free with one of our strictly vetted, ethical partners.
It might very well be Estates UK or another more befitting company for your needs.
They will help you sell your property as fast as possible for the best offer you can realistically achieve.
They will take care of all of the legal processes and fees and you’ll get the cash straight into your account in as little as 7 to 28 days, depending on your circumstances and preference.
Estates UK is just one of the many fast home-buying companies in the UK.
In order to make sure you choose the right one, it’s best if you compare them all.
Look at their strengths & weaknesses, their pros & cons and make an informed decision.
It’s essential to know you’re in safe hands, that’s why we’re here to help.
Use our company comparison table to find a reliable and trustworthy service, and decide whether expediting the sale of your property is the right thing for you.
This review is being constantly screened by our investigator team and will be corrected in line with the emergence of new evidence.
If a company contacts us with a genuine and verifiable piece of information which supports their cause, then we’ll immediately redact the review and point to that information.
On the other hand, if we discover that a company which we’ve previously praised for a certain industry trait, starts to dabble in dodgy practices, we’ll also redact the review immediately.
We’ll point to our new findings and will adjust the table metrics and scores accordingly.
For this reason, make sure to take notice of the ‘last updated’ date at the top of this page.
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