Independently assessing members of

Review Estate Agents in the UK

Compare the top fast home buying companies to make a safe choice

Companies we recommend have been featured in:

Comparing Britain’s biggest estate agents

Our expert team has independently investigated the estate agency sector in the UK. You may think that estate agencies are all independent local firms, but when you look behind the name, you’ll often find they are part of a larger group such as Countrywide or Sequence.

Your choice of estate agent can make a huge difference, not only to the speed of your sale, but also to the service you receive and how simple and straightforward the sales process is. Plus it can make a difference of thousands of pounds to your final bill.

See if an estate agent is right for you in just a few clicks

We’ve carefully checked all the biggest players in the estate agency sector, testing them on a wide range of factors that could affect your property sale. Remember, even with the very best estate agent, you will not be able to sell your home as fast as you can to a cash buyer, and there’s still a one in three chance that your sale will fall through.

We ranked the big estate agency groups, as well as online estate agents and ‘self-selling’ companies like Purple Bricks, to see how they compared on:

  • The cost of selling with an estate agent
  • Average time to sell with an estate agent
  • Service levels and customer satisfaction
  • Typical sales package (such as video tours, 3D room views etc)
  • Exclusive contracts and other tie-ins
  • Average customer review scores
  • History, reputation and industry standing
 

We’ve combined all this data, along with a host of other research, to create their overall PSW rating – your instant guide to the best estate agents in Britain.

These reviews are thorough and uncompromising and each one takes hours to prepare. So now, instead of weeks’ worth of research, it only takes a you few minutes to compare estate agents and see if they offer a better deal than selling your home to a cash homebuyer.

Commission

Estate agents generally charge their fees as a percentage of your property sale price. This can vary between 1% and 3% or more, with VAT added on top. Choosing the right estate agent can make a difference of thousands of pounds in commission alone. Remember, there is no commission or estate agent fees to pay with a cash homebuyer.

Average Sale Time

Naturally, a whole range of market forces will affect how long it takes to sell your home with an estate agent. Nonetheless, some estate agents still manage to sell faster than others. If you’re in a hurry to sell, average sale time will be a big factor in choosing the right estate agent for you. Remember, you could sell your home to a cash buyer in just two weeks or less.

Customer Reviews

The experience of other home sellers will tell you a lot about an estate agent, including things that they might not be willing to tell you themselves. We carefully check feedback and independent customer reviews so you can see behind the glossy websites and flashy store fronts to find the truth about how your estate agent treats its customers

PSW Rating

The PSW rating is our own unique, expert score, based on our sophisticated, multi-faceted, bespoke analysis. We are fully independent, and our only motivation is to help you get the best deal, whether you are selling through an estate agent or selling your home to a cash buyer.

Estate Agent Reviews

Find the cash offer that’s right for you

We have independently investigated a wide range of companies to find the best cash home buyers in the UK. We analysed each one based on their cash offers, reliability, customer service and a wide range of other metrics.

Very few companies made the grade, offering a genuine cash offer, without contracts and without any fees. And very few met our high standards for service, putting the customer first.

The good news is that we did find some open, honest and genuine cash homebuyers out there who get our seal of approval by offering:

Click the Cash offer calculator button below to see what you could get for a quick cash sale from a Property Sale Watchdog approved cash homebuying company.

We’ll connect you to the best

You are completely free to use our consumer guides to choose a cash homebuyer and contact them yourself. There’s no obligation to use our introduction service. We’ll be happy to have helped you to find a cash buyer you can trust and stop you being taken for a ride.

 

However, if you would like, we can introduce you to the cash homebuyer we think is best suited to you, based on our extensive experience of the industry and our in-depth understanding of the options available.

 

This not only ensures you choose the very best cash buyer for your home and your circumstances, but also guarantees that you get the very best service. PSW is a well respected consumer site within the industry and companies will go all out to prove to us that they’re worthy of our approval so that we keep sending customers to them.

 

If you are confused and don’t know who to trust, click below and get matched for free to a fully vetted Cash House Buying company.

Ten good reasons to use the Property Sale Watchdog

1. It's completely free

You don’t have to register or give us any details to read our reviews or expert advice, and we’ll never sell your data to spam advertisers. You can use our site to learn all you need to know and contact your chosen buyer directly if you wish, however you’ll be just another customer to them..

2. You’ll get the best service

However, if you decide to contact a cash homebuyer through PSW, you’ll get the best possible, priority service. Cash buyers want us to keep referring customers to them, so they go all out to impress. They won’t let you down because they know that if they do, you’ll be the last customer we ever refer to them.

3. You’ll get the best, genuine offers

Naturally, any fast home buyer will try to pay as little as they can for your home. That’s the nature of their business. Unfortunately, some will hide behind a fake opening offer that they have no intention of honouring. Part of our assessment is to see if the company honours its offers or drops the price at the last minute. 

4. You’ll get the quickest possible sale

We understand that for many people looking to sell their property for cash, speed is of the essence. You need to find a trustworthy buyer who can purchase your property fast at the highest possible price. We check that they have the funds in hand to buy your home themselves, straight away, and they aren’t using mortgages or third party partners. 

5. We’re completely independent

It doesn’t matter how much a bad operator might offer us to refer customers to them, we’ll only ever recommend companies that have passed our in-depth assessment. We don’t buy homes ourselves, and we have no affiliation with any of the companies we recommend, although we do get a small referral fee which helps to pay for this website.

6. We have years of experience

The expert team at PSW have decades of experience as property professionals. We’ve seen it all, the good, the bad and the downright ugly, so we know straight away who the genuine companies are and who are out to make a quick buck at your expense. They may pull the wool over your eyes, but never over ours.

7. You can cut to the chase

All fast home buying companies seem to make the same promises, so how can you know who to trust? You can spend hours searching online and still be none the wiser! The PSW knows how to tell the genuine companies from the chancers and can help you separate fact from empty promises to get you to the truth fast.

8. Our reviews are unflinching

Our in-depth review process tells you everything you need to know about cash homebuyers, so you can choose your buyer with complete peace of mind. We’ve already asked all the tough questions and searched for all the red flags, so you know exactly what kind of company you’re dealing with.  

9. You’ll get a balanced view

We employ a strictly pragmatic, dispassionate and empirical approach to all the information we collect on your behalf. All cash homebuyers are compared on the same key features so you can compare them like for like. This gives you the tools you need to make an informed decision based on facts and detailed statistics, rather than subjective opinion or fancy websites. 

10. Easy to follow, expert advice

Alongside our comprehensive cash buyer reviews, you will also find extensive guides to the cash homebuying industry and free advice on how to sell problem properties. These articles are all free and can be scanned for a basic understanding or read in full to get an in-depth knowledge of the subject. 

The pros & cons of using a cash home buying company

Pros

With a quick cash home buyer you won’t get the full market value of your property, but you’ll sell it very fast – usually in just two or three weeks. A typical estate agent will take 6-9 months, whereas some cash buyers will offer you a sale in as little as seven days if you need to move fast.


This makes it a great way to avoid repossession, clear debts or sort out urgent financial issues, and a quick way to dispose of inherited property, split the profits in a divorce or relationship breakdown or change homes fast if you get a new work opportunity.

Quick home buying companies purchase your home “as-is”, which means you can skip the elaborate and expensive pre-sale prep, such as repairs, redecorating and refurbishment. There’s no viewers and no stress. You simply give them your property and they give you the agreed price, and it’s all done and dusted in a matter of weeks (in some cases days).

If you decide to sell your property via an estate agent or at an auction, you’ll have to pay a fortune in fees and charges. Plus you’ll have to go through a ton of paperwork, form filling and red tape, including surveys and safety certificates.

With a legitimate quick home buying company, there’s no estate agent commission to pay, and many buyers will pay your legal fees too. Plus of course, their service is fee-free, so the price you’re quoted is the price you’ll get, with no deductions.

Unlike selling on the open market, with a cash buyer there are no viewings to organise, no agent assessments no strangers coming to criticise your house. The entire transaction of your property can be done by phone and online, which is very handy if you’re selling a property far from home, such as your late parent’s place. It’s quick, convenient and completely stress-free.

Cons

Most quick cash home buyers will offer you between 60-85% of your home’s value, depending on how fast you want to sell and how legitimate the quick home-buying company is. The faster the sale, the less money you’ll get, so you need to choose between speed and price, or find a middle ground that you’re comfortable with.

If you use a dodgy cash home buyer, then chances are they won’t pay you anything like what they originally offer – and you may not find out until it’s too late to back out. These companies offer you an attractive high price to tempt you in, then they reduce the price by 15-30% at the last minute when you are locked into the deal.

The reason we advise only to work with one of our strictly vetted partners is because many scammers plague this marketplace.

These unregulated enterprises claim to have “no legal fees” such as those incurred when working with an estate agent, but they still have hidden charges.

You think you’ll at least avoid the legal fees when working with a quick home-buying company but all of a sudden you’re hit with some previously undisclosed charge.

That’s why either work with one of our screened partners or do your due diligence when choosing a home-buying company.

Another way that dodgy companies boost their headline offer price is to have hidden charges to recoup some of that cost. They may claim to offer no legal fees, but they still have hidden costs that you will be committed to, which can set you back thousands of pounds.

You’ve probably worked this out by now, but the cash house buying industry has more than its fair share of cowboys. In fact, sadly the scammers are in the majority and the legitimate companies are the minority.

Selling your property in a matter of days is a very stressful and confusing task, especially if you haven’t done it before and scammers are lining up to take advantage of your vulnerability.

That’s why you carefully read our independent reviews and choose your cash house buying company carefully. Our recommended companies are not only vetted by us, but are also overseen by other regulatory bodies, such as the NAPB, TPO and ICO, giving you complete peace of mind.

Take the first step towards a fast home sale

Click below to see what you could get for your home from a PSW approved fast cash buyer.
If you are confused and don’t know who to trust, click below and get matched for free to a fully vetted Cash House Buying company.