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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 The Property Buying Company and whether you should trust them to sell your property quickly.
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Company
Established in
2012
Members of NAPB
Yes
Members of TPO
Yes
Registered with ICO
Yes
Approved by CTSI
No
Will “The Property Buying Company” pay all of your legal fees?
Yes
Do they ask you to sign a contract?
Yes, always
Government verified transactions
Yes
Cash offer
Average sale time
17 days
Fastest sale time
6 days
Availability
24 / 7
Complaints procedure
No
Customer service
4.1 / 5
Google rating
4.3 / 5
Trustpilot rating
4.7 / 5
Reviews.io rating
4.7 / 5
Feefo rating
N / A
They do have a lot of positive reviews and over a decade of experience, which is usually a good indicator. But we always encourage people to do their own research when trying to sell their home quickly.
4.6 / 5
(source: Companies House)
The Property Buying Company is a cash home-buying company.
Nonetheless, the firm claims to be ‘more than a simple cash buyer’ because they offer the best trade prices, complete sales as fast as 24 hours and have a combined experience of over 50 years.
At a glance they seem to offer a professional, reliable service and maintain a team of experts who are readily willing to assist you 24/7.
They claim to help you sell your property fast and for a competitive price.
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 zero bureaucracy.
The Property Buying Company provides free cash valuations, doesn’t have estate agent or solicitors fees and guarantees the utmost discretion, convenience and speed when helping you sell your property.
They can give you a fast no-obligation quote and purchase your property in as little as 1 day.
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.
The company prides itself on having over 50 years of combined experience in buying homes.
Whether that’s true though, is impossible to verify unless we see indisputable evidence.
Nonetheless, they do have a very large company with not one but four directors and a multitude of other teams consisting of industry experts and professionals.
The Property Buying Company appears to have no hidden charges and no legal fees.
Yes, The Property Buying Company 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.
And just like the other members of the NAPB, The Property Buying Company seems to be a proactive firm which is genuinely looking out for the interests of their customers.
Yes, The Property Buying Company is a member of 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 The Property Buying Company.
These companies have to adhere to a strict ‘Code of Practice for Residential Buying Companies’.
The Property Buying Company is regulated by TPO and strictly follows the above mentioned TPO code of conduct.
This is another noteworthy feather in their cap.
Yes, The Property Buying Company are registered with the ICO.
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.
The ICO also has a Free Online Checker where you can verify whether a company is registered with them or not.
The Property Buying Company not being registered with the ICO isn’t ideal.
They are mostly GDPR compliant.
From our independent investigation, we discovered that ThePropertyBuyingCompany.co.uk is fully GDPR compliant with the “safety of personal data collection forms”.
However, we did find that ThePropertyBuyingCompany.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 ThePropertyBuyingCompany.co.uk GDPR appropriate, others might not.
That’s why we caution you to take this GDPR issue of ThePropertyBuyingCompany.co.uk with a grain of salt.
Yes, The Property Buying Company have cash on hand and we verified their transaction history.
Our investigators found The Property Buying Company’s investment vehicle within Companies House and we discovered that they average 5 government verified transactions every month.
Inferring from this, we can conclude with a relatively high degree of certainty that The Property Buying Company have cash on hand at all times which they use to buy properties.
The Property Buying Company is one of the few cash home buying companies that genuinely buy homes for cash. In this sense, they are an exception in the market since many others claim to do so but don’t 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, The Property Buying Company has traded for more than 5 years.
The Property Buying Company have been in this industry since 2012.
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 notable vote of confidence.
And it needs to be acknowledged.
The average cash offer of The Property Buying Company is 70-80% of the market value
However, The Property Buying Company doesn’t have any hidden agent or conveyancing fees nor any other legal charges.
Everything is taken care of for you.
Whereas all estate agents have a myriad of legal fees which will indirectly reduce the market value of your property.
Below you can see a comparison chart which we found on The Property Buying Company’s website, which shows how they compare against a typical estate agent.
Getting 75-80% of the market value for your property when working with a fast home selling company is fair.
With sub-par home buying companies you’ll sometimes get between 60 – 70% of market value, in some cases even less! That is why it pays to be careful in choosing who to work with.
Inferring from this, The Property Buying Company 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 Property Buying Company’s average sale time is 17 days but their fastest recorded sale time is only 6 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.
We didn’t find any charitable initiatives which The Property Buying Company supports.
Nevertheless, some companies prefer to donate privately or anonymously rather than stating it publicly.
And we’ll naturally update this section if The Property Buying Company get back to us and can demonstrate that they work with charities or non-profit organisations.
We didn’t find anything that raises suspicion during our thorough research of The Property Buying Company.
Our investigators sifted through all of the data and legal records of The Property Buying Company 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, The Property Buying Company haven’t received any additional awards or prizes.
They haven’t won any competitions either.
However, they seem to be one of the few companies that can help you not only with the process of selling your property but also with moving as well.
They have dedicated company moving trucks and a ‘change team’ who they’ll use to help pack your luggage and move.
To assess the overall user experience (UX) of The Property Buying Company, 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 24 hours or less.
Also, they have a FREEPHONE number and a live chat feature both of which you can use to contact the company 24 / 7.
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.
The Property Buying Company’s chat was offline, so we couldn’t estimate their FTR via the traditional method.
Instead, the company had a chat option where you can receive a callback from them in 20 sec after submitting your phone number.
They called us in only 16 sec after we submitted our number which is an excellent response time.
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.
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.
The Property Buying Company has an internal complaints procedure but they don’t have a dedicated page for it. You can find it in their terms & conditions but they haven’t listed an email address or a phone number which you can use when filing a complaint. This most likely means that you should use either their freephone or generic email if you want to contact them about your complaint.
Also, you can submit a complaint through The Property Ombudsman because The Property Buying Company 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 The Property Buying Company’s service, either contact them directly on their generic email/phone or you can speak to the TPO.
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 The Property Buying Company 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 The Property Buying Company’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 The Property Buying Company’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.
The Property Buying Company is a decent cash home buyer..
We thoroughly examined their strengths and weaknesses, user experience (UX), customer service and overall online presence.
They have on average 5 government verified transactions every month.
They are members of the NAPB, TPO and they are registered with the ICO.
They have been in this industry for more than 5 years, and will help you sell your property for zero additional fees and charges.
Their cash offers are reasonable, and they can even help you with moving.
They don’t fully conform with all GDPR regulations.
They don’t seem to have a dedicated complaints procedure.
We will be continuously updating this review (as we do with all of our other content) and once The Property Buying Company fix any of the issues mentioned here, we’ll make sure to adjust our critique and score accordingly.
We’ve independently investigated all the UK’s top fast home buyers with our cast-iron 18 point checklist.
And by using the free Safe Connect™ programme we’ll introduce you to our most recommended & strictly vetted home buyer.
The Safe Connect™ programme was created to ensure you not only get the best possible, genuine cash offer, but also to protect you in this unregulated market.
If you click the orange button below, we’ll automatically Safe Connect you to the best property buyer in the UK – as vetted by our team of investigators. And most importantly, you’ll see exactly why we objectively classified them as the best property buyer in the UK.
If you use the Safe Connect™ programme to connect with a cash home buyer, we’ll personally hold them accountable. We’ll ensure they go the extra mile and treat you like a VIP.
The Safe Connect™ programme is a free service. There are no additional fees or costs on your end.
Safe Connect™ ensures there will be no last-minute price drops and no nasty surprises. It’s quick, easy and it eliminates all headaches.
Our strictly vetted partner will know that you’re coming through Property Sale Watchdog and they won’t dare to mess you around.
The Property Buying Company 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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