Insight
How do I sell a house in Shropshire that needs too much work?
You have four realistic routes. Sell it as it stands to a cash buyer, accepting a discount that is typically somewhere between twenty and thirty five per cent below what the same house would fetch fully done up. Agree an assisted sale, where somebody else funds and manages the refurbishment and your minimum figure is agreed in writing before any work starts. Target specialist cash buyers, if the house is in a state no ordinary mortgage will touch. Or spend a small amount on presentation and put it back on the market properly.
Which one is right depends almost entirely on one question: do you need this finished quickly, or do you need the highest number? Those two things pull in opposite directions, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
Why the house is not selling
It is worth being precise about the cause, because the four routes suit different causes and picking the wrong one is expensive.
Sometimes the building genuinely needs major work: damp, a failed roof, no usable kitchen or bathroom, structural movement, non standard construction, a short lease. In those cases the problem is real and it limits who can buy at all.
Just as often, the building is fine and the presentation is the problem. A house full of a lifetime's belongings, or with a tired brown kitchen and worn carpets, photographs badly and shows worse. Buyers walk in and mentally add thirty thousand pounds of work to a house that needs eight. That is a fixable problem and it does not need route one.
Before you accept a discount, work out whether you are selling a difficult house or a badly presented one.
Route one: sell as it stands, to a cash buyer
The simplest exit. An investor or cash buyer takes the house in its current state, and takes on the refurbishment costs, the project risk, and any compliance work that follows, such as the energy rating or licensing if it is going to be let.
In exchange you accept a discount. On genuinely poor condition stock, the flexibility on price is usually in the twenty to thirty five per cent range against what a clean, mortgageable, fully refurbished equivalent would achieve.
This suits you if: you want certainty and speed above all, you cannot fund or face the work, and the discount is a price you are willing to pay to be finished.
It does not suit you if: you have time, and the gap between the as is price and the done up price is large. In that case you are handing somebody else a lot of money for a few months of organising trades.
Route two: an assisted sale
This is the route most people have never heard of, and it is often the best fit for exactly the situation in this article's title.
In an assisted sale you keep legal ownership of the house. An investor funds and manages the refurbishment out of their own money. Once the work is done, the house is sold once, on the open market, to an ordinary buyer with an ordinary mortgage. You receive a floor price, agreed and written down before anything starts, and the investor is paid out of the extra value their work created.
The parts that matter:
- You pay nothing up front for the works.
- You do not organise trades, skips, access or snagging.
- Your minimum is fixed in advance, so you know the least you can walk away with.
- Properly structured, if the house does not sell, you do not owe a fee.
- The investor protects their money with a legal charge or a registered option, drawn up by a solicitor.
This suits you if: the house would be worth considerably more done up, you cannot or will not do the work, and you can wait a few months for the result.
It does not suit you if: you need the money now, or the property has problems that refurbishment will not solve.
I have written a fuller explanation of how these work, including the floor price and what to watch in the contract, in what is an assisted sale.
Route three: specialist cash buyers, for unmortgageable houses
Some houses cannot be bought with an ordinary mortgage at all. No kitchen or no bathroom will usually do it. So will serious structural problems, non standard construction, knotweed, a very short lease, or certain title and covenant issues.
If that is your house, your realistic buyer pool is investors and cash buyers, and no amount of relisting changes that. The honest choice is between a cash price today that reflects the cost and risk of making the house lendable again, or the time, money and stress of fixing those things yourself first.
It is worth knowing which category you are in before you talk to anybody, because it changes what a fair offer looks like.
Route four: fix the presentation and relist
The cheapest route, and the most commonly overlooked. If the house is structurally sound and the problem is clutter, tired decor and bad photographs, then a clear out, a deep clean, fresh paint, new carpets and properly staged photographs can unstick a listing that has sat there for four months.
That costs a fraction of a full refurbishment and sometimes it is simply the most profitable thing you can do. A good agent should have told you this. If nobody has mentioned it, that is worth noticing.
What I would ask you
I make offers on property and structure deals across Telford, Oswestry and Shrewsbury, so I have a commercial interest here and you should read the above knowing that. What I would rather do is help you work out which of the four routes you are actually in, including the ones I make nothing from.
The questions I would ask are these. What does the house need, honestly, and has anyone qualified looked at it? What is it worth done up, on real comparable sales rather than a hopeful guess? How quickly do you need this finished, and why? And is there anything about the title, the lease or the construction that would stop an ordinary buyer getting a mortgage on it?
I spent six months refurbishing my own house, doing a good deal of the work myself, so I have a fair idea what things actually cost rather than what they cost on television. If it turns out the best thing for you is to spend a thousand pounds tidying it up and relisting with your existing agent, I will tell you that, and you will have lost nothing by asking.
This article is general information about the options available, not advice on your particular house or your particular circumstances, and it is not legal or financial advice. Any sale structure more complicated than a straightforward purchase should be drawn up and explained by your own solicitor before you sign anything.