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 House Buyer Bureau 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
2011
Members of NAPB
Yes
Members of TPO
Yes
Registered with ICO
Yes
Approved by CTSI
Yes
Will “House Buyer Bureau” pay all of your legal fees?
Yes (if using their recommended solicitors)
Do they ask you to sign a contract?
No
Government verified transactions
Yes
Cash offer
Average sale time
Not listed
Fastest sale time
7 days
Availability
Not stated
Complaints procedure
Yes
Customer service
4.6 / 5
Google rating
4.7 / 5 (110 reviews)
Trustpilot rating
4.6 / 5 (266 reviews)
Reviews.co.uk rating
N / A
Feefo rating
N / A
4.9 / 5
(source: Companies House)
House Buyer Bureau is a quick property buying company that claims to be a cash buyer.
They have bought over 3,500 properties since 2010 and can buy your property in the usual 7 day time frame with no fees to pay if you use their recommended solicitors.
They offer a quick and easy sale, where you are in control and they are adamant on their website that there will be no last minute renegotiation.
House Buyer Bureau say that they will buy homes in any condition anywhere in the UK.
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 bureaucracy.
House Buyer Bureau 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 and 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.
The strong track record of purchases by the House Buyer Bureau is a noteworthy accomplishment. They are a genuine cash buyer and will buy your home themselves, not pass you on to a third party.
House Buyer Bureau claim to have funds ready to buy your house, and they are prepared to provide proof of this. This avoids any delays to the sale while mortgages or other finance are arranged.
Their website is easy to navigate and very informative and offers a free guide on how to sell your house fast (once you have given them your email address and agreed to marketing emails).
House Buyer Bureau appears to have no hidden charges and no legal fees.
It’s important to remember:
You won’t get the full market value of your property but you’ll sell it very fast.
In fact, this is by far the fastest way to sell. A typical estate agent will take 6-9 months whereas a fast home-selling company can do it in mere days.
You’re sacrificing a negotiable percentage of cash for an exponential increase in speed-of-sale and a major reduction of headaches and legal complications.
Yes, House Buyer Bureau is a member of NAPB.
In fact, the House Buyer Bureau was one of the companies that started this whole initiative.
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.
House Buyer Bureau is regulated by TPO and strictly follows the TPO code of conduct.
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 The House Buyer Bureau.
These companies have to adhere to a strict ‘Code of Practice for Residential Buying Companies’.
Yes, House Buyer Bureau have been registered with the ICO since 2016.
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, the House Buyer Bureau 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.
As far as we can tell, they are mostly GDPR compliant.
Housebuyerbureau.co.uk has a published privacy policy on their website which details your rights regarding how your data is gathered, stored and used. This states that there are some data rights that you may not be able to exercise.
Housebuyerbureau.co.uk installs certain marketing cookies that aren’t necessarily GDPR friendly, and these cookies may be installed without the consent of the visitor.
Such cookies are used for marketing and re-targeting purposes, such as displaying relevant ads. Users are urged to err on the side of caution when providing personal information, and always read any cookie agreements before clicking your consent.
House Buyer Bureau claim to have cash in hand to buy properties and offer to show proof of funds to potential buyers.
Our team of investigators found one of their investment vehicles within Companies House.
This allowed us to validate that the parent company, HBB Relocation Services LTD, has more than two and a half thousand government-verified transactions which shows that they have been trading very successfully.
Numerous government-verified transactions have been delivered in recent weeks, showing that the company is highly active and being used by a number of home sellers.
Based on this evidence, we can be reasonably certain that House Buyer Bureau currently have cash on hand, although we cannot guarantee it.
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 multiple, and recent, government verified transactions.
Yes, House Buyer Bureau have traded for more than 5 years.
They have been in this industry since 2011.
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.
The House Buyer Bureau claims to offer around 80% of the market value of your property. This is based on their own independent assessment and may be lower than your estate agent valued the property at.
80% is a standard offer price for fast house buyers, although the actual offer you get will vary according to the type, location and condition of your home, as well as how fast you need to sell. Faster sales attract lower offers.
Below you can see some of the perceived benefits of using House Buyer Bureau instead of a generic high-street or online estate agent.
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.
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:
House Buyer Bureau can buy your home in as little as seven days, or will arrange a sale at your convenience.
House Buyer Bureau has a Charity Programme which raises funds for MacMillan Cancer Support, Lincs and Notts Air Ambulance and LOROS Hospice. Monthly donations are made in line with the number of properties purchased, in addition to contributions from customers and proceeds from staff fundraising activities.
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 anything that raises suspicion during our thorough research of House Buyer Bureau.
Our investigators sifted through all of the data and legal records of House Buyer Bureau and everything was clean.
However, we’ll redact this paragraph 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, House Buyer Bureau 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 housebuyerbureau.co.uk we first analysed their website for ease of use and intuitiveness.
Their website is extensive and informative, containing all of the information you would want to know as a home seller considering a cash buyer.
You can contact them via a freephone number or send a message via their online contact form. They also have an online chat feature which offers a quick response to any questions you have.
We calculated their First Response Time (FTR) by messaging them at approximately 10 AM on a non-holiday weekday (on a Thursday to be exact) and used a stopwatch to estimate how long it took them to respond.
House Buyer Bureau responded in 53 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 House Buyer Bureau, 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.
House Buyer Bureau have a complaints procedure detailed on their website, along with a privacy policy and a Code of Conduct. This shows that they are willing to listen and if possible, rectify any problems that may arise.
If this does not resolve the issue to your satisfaction, you can submit a complaint through The Property Ombudsman. House Buyer Bureau are a TPO member and agree to their code of practice and complaints procedure.
Having a formal complaints procedure is reassuring for customers and reflects well on the standard of service you can expect.
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 House Buyer Bureau 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 House Buyer Bureau’ social media presence and online reviews.
We didn’t find anything suspicious with House Buyer Bureau’ 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.
House Buyer Bureau is one of the largest and most successful fast home sale companies in the UK with a strong track record of house purchases stretching back over a number of years.
They will offer a fair price for your home and a fast sale within a timescale to suit you.
As with many larger companies, you may not get the same level of personal service and expertise as the smaller companies. However, this is balanced by their excellent track record, strong financial position and flexible approach.
They are generally reviewed well by their customers, however, House Buyer Bureau’s overall review scores could be better, with 3% of reviewers giving just one star on Trustpilot and several one star reviews on Google.
They have a good complaints procedure both internal and external via the Property Ombudsman and are members of the NAPB and TPO, and they are registered with the ICO.
We will be continuously updating this review as we do with all of our other content. If House Buyer Bureau 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 House Buyer Bureau 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 House Buyer Bureau 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.
House Buyer Bureau 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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