The house is the problem
No mortgage valuation. No survey re-quote. No third viewing that never happens.
Some houses are hard to sell on the open market for reasons that have nothing to do with the market. Subsidence history. Non-standard construction. A short lease. Japanese knotweed. Empty for years. The pool of buyers shrinks, the ones who do bid pull out, and the price drifts down with each fall-through. We buy with our own funds, so a lender's surveyor isn't going to end our purchase.
Vacant and problematic property
A house that's been empty for a year is more expensive than people realise. Council tax at 100%, sometimes 200% once the empty-property premium kicks in. Insurance that costs more and covers less. A garden going the way of gardens. And every month it sits, buyers assume there's something wrong with it.
We take vacant properties in whatever state they're in. Full of furniture, empty, mid-refurbishment, boarded up. You do not need to clear it, tidy it, or make it presentable.
If it's a rental you've stopped being able to let — awkward layout, difficult area, tenants who kept leaving — the same applies. You don't have to fix it to sell it to us.
Structural defects and unmortgageable houses
Subsidence, heave, movement of any kind. Non-standard construction: pre-cast reinforced concrete, steel frame, Wimpey No-Fines. A short lease that's fallen below eighty years. Spray foam in the roof. Cladding. A history of flooding. Any of these will fail a mainstream lender's valuation, and once one lender has said no, the next one usually does too.
We don't need a mortgage. We assess the property on its own terms — what it is, what it would cost to put right, what it's worth once put right — and we make a written offer against that. If we can hold the price after a survey, we do. On the rare occasion we can't, we tell you at the visit, not at completion.
What we'll want to see.
Nothing you don't already have, or can't get in a phone call:
- Any survey, structural report or engineer's letter you already hold.
- For leasehold: the lease and the most recent service-charge statement.
- Any correspondence from insurers about past claims.
- If you don't have any of these, that's fine. We'll commission what we need at our cost.
A note on the valuation tool
For structurally defective or unmortgageable property, the online tool will usually route you to a person rather than show a range. That's deliberate. A calculator working from comparable sales cannot honestly price a house with a defect the comparables didn't have. Please call us, or leave your number below.
