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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 Spring Move and whether you should trust them to sell your property quickly.
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Company
Established in
2015
Members of NAPB
Yes
Members of TPO
Yes
Registered with ICO
Yes
Approved by CTSI
No
Will “Spring Move” pay all of your legal fees?
Sometimes
Do they ask you to sign a contract?
Yes, always
Government verified transactions
No
Cash offer
Average sale time
14 days
Fastest sale time
7 days
Availability
9 AM – 5.30 PM (Mon-Sun)
Complaints procedure
Yes, decent
Customer service
4.1 / 5
Google rating
N / A
Trustpilot rating
4.5 / 5
Reviews.co.uk rating
N / A
Feefo rating
N / A
Spring Move (previously NPT) seems like a genuine cash buyer with an experienced team.
However, we couldn’t find their government-verified transactions, therefore we cannot say for certain whether they have cash on hand or not.
4.3 / 5
(source: Companies House)
Spring Move is a cash home-buying company.
Even though it was established in 2015, Spring Move is actually the successor of National Property Trade (NPT) which was founded in 2007.
Therefore, the company has over a decade of experience in selling properties. They claim to have the most reliable funding of any home buying service in the UK.
And they promise to be fully transparent while helping you sell your property fast.
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.
Spring Move provides free cash quotes, doesn’t have legal or agent fees and have the capacity to buy any type of property, no matter the condition.
They can give you a no-obligation cash offer within hours and purchase your property in as little as 2 days.
This type of sale is 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.
In 2013, Spring Move (NPT at the time) acquired funding from Stonehaven. As a result, Spring Move (NPT) claims to have become UK’s biggest cash house buyer with a £60 million annual property purchasing capacity.
In 2019, Spring Move states that they have reached an annual property purchasing capacity of £300 million which enabled them to help even more people.
Despite that, we didn’t find any government-verified transactions in Spring Move’s investment vehicle.
Therefore, we can’t say for certain and to what extent these claims are true.
Yes, Spring Move 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 itself is completely voluntary. Nobody forces these cash home buyers to become members, they do it of their own volition.
This suggests that Spring Move want to be a part of the select few companies regulated by the NAPB and are taking the right steps towards integrity and transparency.
Yes, Spring Move is a member of the 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 Spring Move.
These companies have to adhere to a strict ‘Code of Practice for Residential Buying Companies’.
Spring Move is regulated by TPO and strictly follows the above mentioned TPO code of conduct.
Yes, Spring Move has 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, Spring Move 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.
Being registered with the ICO is always a good sign that the company values their customers’ information and privacy rights.
They are somewhat GDPR compliant.
From our independent investigation, we discovered that springmove.co.uk is fully GDPR compliant with the “safety of personal data collection forms”.
However, they don’t ask for consent prior to installing cookies. For EU users these cookies can be installed after obtaining user consent.
Also, some resources are requested without encryption during the loading of pages. This can lead to the modification of downloaded data and as a result, to the breach of personal data.
Some cookies installed during the loading of springmove.co.uk can be used to track for marketing purposes and be transferred to countries that are not recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection (Art. 45 GDPR).
We cannot say for certain whether Spring Move have cash on hand or not.
Our investigators found Spring Move’s investment vehicle within Companies House but there were no government-verified transactions.
This could be simply due to the fact that they are using a different company name to track and register these Companies House transactions.
We find this common practice, not only in the fast home-selling market but in many other industries in the UK.
Nevertheless, in light of these findings, we cannot say for certain whether Spring Move 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, Spring Move was established in 2015 and the company’s predecessor National Property Trade was established in 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.
And it needs to be acknowledged.
The average cash offer of Spring Move is 80-85% of the market value
Spring Move does use a rather transparent process to calculate the cash offers. They have a 9% one-off buying fee and a risk premium fee of up to 6% depending on the property’s condition, character, size and situation.
And depending on your circumstance, property condition and preference, Spring Move will use their bespoke process to calculate the cash offer.
However, there aren’t any hidden charges or legal fees.
Whereas all estate agents have a myriad of legal fees which will indirectly reduce the market value of your property.
Getting 85% of the market value for your property when working with a fast home selling company is reasonable but acceptable.
We’ve discovered that with sub-par home buying companies you’ll often get between 60 – 65% and sometimes even less.
Inferring from this, Spring Move 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:
Spring Move’s average sale time is 14 days and their fastest recorded sale time is 7 days.
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.
Spring Move supports the Restart Lives charity which is a London-based charity that helps homeless people get off the street and return to normal living as productive members of society.
It’s important to recognise and shed light on a home buying company’s altruistic and philanthropic aspirations but only if they are truly genuine.
If we discover even an ounce of shady behaviour, rest assured we’ll report it in our review.
We didn’t find anything that raises suspicion during our thorough research of Spring Move.
Our investigators sifted through all of the data and legal records of Spring Move 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.
Spring move won the 2020 ‘Property Investor Awards’ for the 3rd time
This award is given to innovative and influential UK companies which show excellent property selling and investing prowess.
The event, usually attended by over 500+ guests and is one of the biggest property events in the UK.
To assess the overall user experience (UX) of Spring Move, 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 within 48 hours or less.
They do have a phone number and email enquiry address where you can contact them.
But they don’t have a live chat feature.
For this reason, we couldn’t calculate their First Response Time (FTR).
FTR is calculated by measuring how long it takes for a company to respond after someone messages them via their live chat feature.
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.
Since Spring Move don’t have a live chat feature they cannot respond to customers who prefer live text-based communication.
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.
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.
Spring Move has an excellent internal & formal complaints procedure which can be accessed directly through their website. It’s not hidden in the privacy policy but it’s an actual standalone page which is always great to see.
Their complaints procedure has a clearly outlined step-by-step process.
And because Spring Move is a TPO member, you can submit a complaint through The Property Ombudsman website.
Every TPO member agrees to The Property Ombudsman Code Of Practice which allows customers to file complaints against TPO members, if needed.
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 Spring Move 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 Spring Move’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 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 its 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 Spring Move’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 or their unique monthly search traffic.
Spring Move (previously NPT) seems like a genuine cash buyer with an experienced team.
However, we couldn’t find their government-verified transactions, therefore we cannot say for certain whether they have cash on hand or not.
We thoroughly examined their strengths and weaknesses, user experience (UX), customer service and overall online presence.
Spring Move are members of the NAPB and TPO, and they are registered with the ICO.
They give reasonable offers relative to the fast home sale industry and they can buy your property in mere days.
Their website isn’t GDPR friendly so proceed with caution when entering your personal details.
Spring Move does have a great formal complaints procedure which has a dedicated page on their website and isn’t hidden in the privacy policy.
We will be continuously updating this review (as we do with all of our other content) and once Spring Move fixes any of the issues mentioned here, 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 Spring Move 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.
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.
Spring Move 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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