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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 National Residential 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
2007
Members of NAPB
Yes
Members of TPO
Yes
Registered with ICO
Yes
Approved by CTSI
No
Will “National Residential” pay all of your legal fees?
In some cases
Do they ask you to sign a contract?
Yes, sometimes
Government verified transactions
Yes
Cash offer
Average sale time
35 days
Fastest sale time
7 days
Availability
8AM – 8PM (Mon-Fri); 9AM – 1PM (Sat)
Complaints procedure
Yes, great
Customer service
4.7 / 5
Google rating
4.6 / 5
Trustpilot rating
4.5 / 5
Reviews.co.uk rating
N / A
Feefo rating
N / A
4.9 / 5
(source: Companies House)
National Residential is an online auctioneer that sells properties via a modern auction to their investor database. And they also do fast home sales for cash.
The firm states that it delivers the best prices, quickest property sales and fastest completions for both corporate and private clients.
They do cash advances to those customers who need money urgently, even before the property sale is made.
The team at National Residential claims to always put the customer first and ensures that all valuations and processes are transparent.
Whether all of that’s true, will be revealed in this review.
When working with National Residential, 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.
National Residential provides tailor-made valuations, doesn’t have any agency fees and provides £720 inc VAT towards your legal costs.
Unlike other cash home buyers, National Residential has 3 different modes of selling but only 2 of them pertain to the fast home buying sector.
They can either sell your property within 7 days for up to 80% of the market value or within 28 days for up to 90% of the market value.
These types of sale are perfect for people in a rush, who don’t have time for unnecessary red tape.
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.
The company prides itself on being one of the very first cash home buyers in the UK.
Established in 2007, National Residential have bought and sold thousands of properties throughout London and the UK.
The firm offers its clients either a guaranteed 7-Day fast sale option for up to 80% of the property’s market value or a 28-Day chain-free sale for up to 90% of the market value.
Being one of the first cash home buyers in the UK, National Residential have an experienced, highly professional team that is ready to tackle the sale of any property.
At a glance, they appear to have a very personable and caring, hands-on approach to property selling which is breath of fresh air in this industry.
Whether that’s their real company ethos or simply a way to gain the trust of the people, we’ll explore this bit by bit in the sections below.
National Residential appear to have no agency fees and will provide £720 inc VAT towards your legal costs.
Yes, National Residential is a member of the 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 is completely voluntary. Nobody forces these cash home buyers to become members, they do it of their own volition.
This suggests that National Residential want to be a part of the select few companies regulated by the NAPB and are taking the right steps towards integrity and transparency.
No, National Residential isn’t currently a member of TPO but they informed us that they are working towards becoming one.
However, National Residential is a member of The Property Redress (PRS) scheme which is a government-approved, consumer redress scheme authorised by the Department for Communities and Local Government (“DCLG”) and by the National Trading Standards Estate Agency Team.
The Property Ombudsman (TPO) and Property Redress Scheme (PRS) defend the interests of the public by investigating and addressing complaints of maladministration or a violation of rights.
In essence, they both do the same thing, which is to protect the consumer and give them an opportunity for immediate recourse in the cases of malpractice.
However, The Property Ombudsman has been providing consumers and property agents with an alternative dispute resolution service since 1990.
And the TPO has a specific category for fast home sale companies, such as National Residential.
These companies have to adhere to a strict ‘Code of Practice for Residential Buying Companies’.
National Residential is currently regulated by the PRS and will most likely soon become a member of the TPO.
We’ll update this section if/when National Residential becomes a member of the TPO.
Yes, National Residential have been registered with the ICO since 2014.
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, National Residential 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.
The fact that National Residential is registered with the ICO further solidifies their authenticity.
They are mostly GDPR compliant.
From our independent investigation, we discovered that National-Residential.co.uk is fully GDPR compliant with the “safety of personal data collection forms”.
However, we did find that National-Residential.co.uk installs certain marketing cookies that aren’t necessarily GDPR friendly.
But this is a contested topic and it’s virtually impossible to give an objective assessment.
Certain cookie types can be interpreted in multiple ways, hence some experts might deem National-Residential.co.uk GDPR appropriate, others might not.
It’s not certain whether National Residential have cash on hand.
Our team of investigators found one of their investment vehicles within Companies House.
This allowed us to validate that they do have government-verified transactions which is a big plus in their favour.
But their last government-verified transactions was delivered in 2018.
That’s why we cannot state for certain whether or not National Residential 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.
We find this common practice in the fast home-selling market.
Nevertheless, in light of these findings, we cannot cannot say for certain whether National-Residential.co.uk have or don’t have cash on hand which they use to buy properties.
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, National Residential have traded for more than 5 years.
They have actually traded for a whopping 14 years and the Director has remained the same since the very beginning.
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.
And it needs to be acknowledged.
National Residential has 3 different property selling models which makes it tricky to estimate their average cash offer. However, after a thorough case-by-case examination, we estimate 80-90% to be a reasonable approximation for their average cash offer.
However, National Residential doesn’t have any hidden agent or conveyancing fees.
And they contribute £720 inc VAT towards your legal costs, but only if you make the sale.
So, no sale no fees. And unlike some of the other cash buyers or auctions National Residential do not have an entry fees or charges for legal packs or advertising.
It’s important to note that National Residential have 3 modes of selling properties.
Their Cash Purchase option will achieve a sale within 7 days and will give you up to 75% of your property’s market value. There are no estate agency fees and National Residential will pay £720 inc VAT towards your legal costs.
Their Fixed Price option will achieve a sale within 28 days and will give you up to 90-95% of your property’s market value. You will still pay zero estate agency fees and National Residential will pay £720 inc VAT towards your legal costs.
Their SSR 100% Price Sale is for those looking to sell their property via a 3rd party estate agency. You’ll get the highest possible valuation on your property up to 100% and it will take up to 28 days to achieve a sale. However, you’ll have to pay a multitude of estate agency fees and you’ll have to pay your own legal fees.
If your looking for a fast property sale with little bureaucracy, then we recommend looking at their Cash Purchase and Fixed Price selling models.
It’s important to note that very few quick home buying companies are as transparent about their selling process as National Residential.
Some dodgy cash home buyers will state that they have “no fees” or that they will sell your property fast, but in fact, they not only charge you fees at the end but also delay the sale process for months.
National Residential are completely upfront with their property selling structure.
And this is one of the main reasons why we recommend them.
Getting 80-90% 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, National Residential 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:
The National Residential’s average sale time depends highly on which selling option you pick.
As we outlined in the section above, they have 3 selling modalities. One of them will help you sell your property within 7 days, the other two within 28 days.
But if we look at all of them combine together, then National Residential’s average selling time is around 20 days and their fastest selling time is only 1 day.
Remember:
With a quick home-buying company, 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.
That’s why you need to carefully consider your options.
Do you want a bit more money or do you want a significantly faster sale?
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 National Residential 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 National-Residential.co.uk
Our investigators sifted through all of the data and legal records of National Residential 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, National Residential 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 National-Residential.co.uk, we first analysed their website for ease of use and intuitiveness.
It’s easy to navigate from their homepage to their fast cash sale options and it’s easy to understand how each one of these selling modalities work.
Also, they have a FREEPHONE number and a live chat feature which you can use to contact the company Monday to Friday from 9 AM – 8 PM and on Saturdays from 9 AM – 1 PM.
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.
National Residential responded in 1 min and 36 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 National Residential maintain a highly customer-centric ethos which is why we rank them high in our list.
We also asked if National Residential offers some sort of ‘Client Satisfaction Guarantee’, and if yes, what would that guarantee consist of.
But just like many of the other leading cash home buyers in the UK, National Residential currently don’t offer a Client Satisfaction Guarantee.
However, they do have a comprehensive internal ‘Code Of Practice’ which gives every dissatisfied customer the ‘right to cancel’ and a ‘dispute resolution’.
National Residential are happy to help resolve any issues and problems, within reason, as soon as possible.
Also, just like the other proactive fast home buying companies, National Residential did go out of their way and offered additional help and advice which warrants acknowledgement.
In this turbulent market, a fast home buying company should preferably have a formal complaints procedure on their website, where clients can express any disagreements, issues or just plain dissatisfaction with the overall service.
By having such a complaints procedure in place, the home buying company shows that they are willing to listen and if possible, rectify any problems that may arise.
National Residential has an internal complaints procedure, details of which are available upon request by emailing: info@national-residential.co.uk or by calling 01244 341066.
Also, you can submit a complaint through The Property Ombudsman because National Residential are a TPO member.
And every TPO member agrees to The Property Ombudsman Code Of Practice which allows customers to file complaints against TPO members, if needed.
So in the rare off chance that you are dissatisfied with National Residential’s service, either contact them directly on the email/phone outlined above or you can speak to the TPO.
Additionally, National Residential have a thorough internal ‘Code Of Practice’ and are a member of the Property Redress Scheme which is a governing entity similar to the TPO.
It’s also important to mention that National Residential are one of the few home buying companies that actively reply to virtually all of the complaints and comments they receive on review websites such as Trustpilot.
This notable display of customer care needs acknowledgement, especially in a market where very few home buying companies readily converse with their clients outside of transactional discord.
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 National Residential 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 National Residential’s social media presence and online reviews.
What’s not anecdotal is the Domain Rating (DR) and Search traffic (ST) metrics.
The Domain Rating is an internet metric that shows the strength of a website.
The longer a website has been online, generally the more other websites link back to it.
These are called backlinks. Backlinks are like a minor vote of confidence.
It’s rare to see a a scam website with a high Domain Rating. Why? Because other websites realise it’s a scam and they never give their “vote of confidence” to them.
The more backlinks a website has, the higher their Domain Rating will be.
For this reason, we only advise you to work with websites with a Domain Rating of 10 and up.
However, it’s still important to remember that virtually any online metric can be falsified or faked these days. Therefore, take this with a grain of salt and don’t give it much importance.
The Search Traffic is an internet metric that shows approximately how many unique visitors a given website has per month.
Also, this metric is an average evaluation over a period of several months.
Therefore, the more Search Traffic a company has, the less likely they are a scam.
Scam companies don’t have recurring visitors because once they scam someone, the victims protest and tell other people online to beware of the said scam company.
Also, scam companies appear less frequently in the top Google results because they usually have lower Domain Ratings. And Google only ranks websites with a high DR at the top.
This makes the scams unsustainable over a long period of time, and therefore, they cannot have a high Search Traffic.
The Domain Rating and Search Traffic are directly proportional. If the Domain Rating is high, then the Search Traffic will be high also, and vice versa.
All of the below stats and metrics have been taken as of the last updated date which can be found at the top of this review.
We didn’t find anything suspicious with National Residential’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.
National Residential is one of the very few legitimate fast home sale companies in the UK.
They were established in 2007 which makes them one of the very first cash home buyers in the UK.
We thoroughly examined their strengths and weaknesses, user experience (UX), customer service and overall online presence.
National Residential are members of the NAPB and TPO, and they are registered with the ICO.
If your looking for a fast property sale with little bureaucracy, then we recommend looking at their ‘Cash Purchase’ and ‘Fixed Price Option’ selling models.
Unlike some of the dodgy cash home buyers, National Residential are completely upfront with their property selling process and structure. They don’t hide any fees and they don’t over exaggerate the speed at which they can sell a property.
They have seem to have excellent customer service and a solid internal complaints procedure.
Their director, who’s been in charge of the company since its inception, still to this day tackles most property sales personally and makes sure everything runs smoothly. Unlike other home buying companies, in which the directors are never to be seen, with National Residential you’ll most likely be able to converse with Mr Coughlin directly when you initiate your property sale.
National Residential don’t fully conform with all GDPR regulations but we’re yet to see a website that does.
We validated that they do have government-verified transactions which is a big plus in their favour but that last one was delivered in 2018. That’s why we cannot state for certain whether or not National Residential currently have cash on hand.
We will be continuously updating this review as we do with all of our other content. If National Residential decide to alter, amend or modify something, then we’ll make sure to adjust our critique and score accordingly.
National Residential is one of the few companies that receive the PropertySaleWatchdog woof of approval.
We want to help out as many people as possible. That’s why we created this comprehensive, in-depth National Residential 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 National Residential 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.
National Residential 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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