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 Housebuyers4u and whether you should trust them to sell your property quickly and whether they’ll give you an optimal price.
Want to hear who we recommend above Housebuyers4U?
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We ranked them based on their cash offers, reliability, customer service and 15 more metrics.
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My Homebuyers will give you the best genuine cash offer, without contracts and without any fees.
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Company
Established in
2007
Members of NAPB
Yes
Members of TPO
Yes
Registered with ICO
Yes
Approved by CTSI
Yes
Will “Housebuyers4u” pay all of your legal fees?
Yes
Do they ask you to sign a contract?
No
Government verified transactions
None found
Cash offer
Average sale time
7-14 days
Fastest sale time
7 days
Availability
Not stated
Complaints procedure
Yes
Customer service
4.8 / 5
Google rating
4.7 / 5 (78 reviews)
Trustpilot rating
4.8 / 5 (142 reviews)
Reviews.co.uk rating
N / A
Feefo rating
4.9 / 5 (no reviews for a year)
4.8 / 5
(source: Companies House)
Housebuyers4U is a quick property buying company that claims to be a cash buyer. According to their website they have helped 7300 homeowners and bought 191 houses in the last year alone.
They have over 15 years of experience and can buy your property in 7-14 days with no fees using their own funds. They can also offer a cash advance under certain circumstances.
They boast a good number of five-star reviews on independent sites such as Trustpilot and Google, with customers commenting on their great service. They also respond to all negative reviews with a fair explanation.
Housebuyers4U claim to buy homes in any condition.
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.
Housebuyers4U 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.
If the number of properties bought is true, then Housebuyers4U is a very busy and highly successful operation. Their independent reviews seem to back this up with lots of satisfied customers.
Housebuyers4U say that they use their own cash to buy properties which allows them to complete property sales at a much faster rate – offering sales in 7 to 14 days.
They also offer a 100% no-fall through guarantee – though it is not made clear what this guarantee actually involves beyond reassuring customers. Their site also boasts a 100% completion rate.
Housebuyers4U 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, Housebuyers4U 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.
Housebuyers4U is regulated by TPO and strictly follows their 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 Housebuyers4U.
These companies have to adhere to a strict ‘Code of Practice for Residential Buying Companies’.
Yes, Housebuyers4U 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.
As they are registered with the ICO, Housebuyers U 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.
According to their website, Housebuyers4U will always work to fully protect your rights and comply with their obligations under the GDPR.
They detail their extensive privacy and data policy on their website, covering how your data is collected, used and stored and what your rights are.
Nonetheless, users are urged to err on the side of caution when providing personal information on their site, and should always read any cookie agreements before clicking your consent.
It’s not certain whether Housebuyers4U have cash on hand.
Our team of investigators was unable to find their investment vehicles within Companies House and so could not ascertain if they had any government-verified transactions.
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.
Unfortunately, with no company number listed on their website, and no listing for Housebuyers4U with Companies House, we cannot state for certain whether or not Housebuyers4U currently have cash on hand.
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, Housebuyers4U have traded for more than 15 years.
They have been in this industry since 2007.
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.
Housebuyers4U offers around 80% of the market value for your home. This 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 Housebuyers4U 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.
Inferring from this, Housebuyers4U gives reasonable offers in the context of fast home selling companies.
Of course this doesn’t mean that every home achieves that kind of valuation as it depends on a myriad of factors. Sometimes there are justifiable reasons why you may receive a lower offer.
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:
Housebuyers4U offer sales in 7-14 days, but can also accommodate longer sales periods to suit your schedule. but their fastest recorded sale time is only 7 days.
We didn’t find any charitable initiatives which Housebuyers4U supports. Nevertheless, some companies prefer to donate privately or anonymously rather than stating it publicly.
Of course, 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.
We didn’t find anything that raises suspicion during our thorough research of Housebuyers4U.
Our investigators sifted through all of the data and what records we could find regarding Housebuyers4U 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, Housebuyers4U 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 Housebuyers4U.co.uk we first analysed their website for ease of use and intuitiveness.
Their website is comprehensive and easy to navigate, though at times it can feel too big and a little ‘hard sell’.
You can get a free quote and free home assessment by clicking the button, which appears multiple times throughout the site. You can also call them or email directly, or complete the contact form. These alternatives are not featured prominently on the site but can be found in the footer links.
We calculated their First Response Time (FTR) by messaging them at approximately 11 AM on a non-holiday weekday (on a Wednesday to be exact) and used a stopwatch to estimate how long it took them to respond.
Housebuyers4U responded in 1 min and 11 sec.
Which is 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.
Established industry leaders like Housebuyers4U maintain a highly customer-centric ethos which is why we rank them high in our list.
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.
Housebuyers4U have a very thorough internal formal complaints procedure where you can contact their complaints resolution team.
If this does not resolve your problem, you can escalate it to The Property Ombudsman. As a member, Housebuyers4U agree to the mediation of TPO and also agree to comply with their code of practice.
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 Housebuyers4U 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 Housebuyers4U’ social media presence and online reviews.
We didn’t find anything suspicious with Housebuyers4U’ social media, TV and online presence, nor with their customer reviews – although it should be noted that their high Feefo rating of 4.9 did not include any recent reviews.
We also didn’t find anything suspicious with their domain rating and backlink profile nor their unique monthly search traffic.
Housebuyers4U is one of the most popular fast home sale companies in the UK and they have an impressive track record of property purchases dating back to 2007.
Housebuyers4U are members of the NAPB and TPO, and they are registered with the ICO.
They provide a free cash offer in 24hours, which includes a free home assessment by an expert. They claim that all their purchases are made with their own funds and that they have made purchases worth over £300m down the years.
They give a standard cash offers of up to 80% and will buy your property in 7-14 days, though this is based on their own assessment of the property value, and may be lower than your estate agent’s valuation. They also offer one to one service throughout your sale.
They enjoy very high customer ratings on several major independent portals, such as Trustpilot.
Housebuyers4U appear to fully conform with all GDPR regulations, have a good complaints procedure both internal and external via the Property Ombudsman and are members of the NAPB and TPO, and registered with the ICO.
However, they do not list their company number on the site, and we were unable to identify their records with Companies House. This may be because they are a trading name of another organisation, but we were unable to verify this.
We will be continuously updating this review as we do with all of our other content. If Housebuyers4U 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 Housebuyers4U 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 Housebuyers4U 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.
Housebuyers4U 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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