Cash Buyer - Friday 28 January

Around £0.5bn private funds are now at our fingertips to buy properties quickly (at trade prices) - helping fill the gap left by our competitors who are rapidly disappearing due to the lack of buy-to-let mortgages which almost all our competitors rely upon. 

One of our private funds (£150m available) allows us to buy certain properties in London and South-East England for hard cash, completing the whole process within as little as one week.  Not many companies can genuinely compete with that on such a large scale.

We now mainly buy properties using private funds, unlike most of our competitors who rely upon buy-to-let mortgages to fund purchases.  In the current economic climate, buy-to-let mortgages have become very hard to obtain - so our competitors, almost all depending on buy-to-let mortgages, often have to pull-out at the last minute when their mortgage application is declined.

When we buy using private funds (from private equity funds, hedge funds and individual investors), once we confirm an offer to buy a property, we won't need to pull out (unless, unusually, a legal problem with you/your property later comes to light).

Because of all the above, we believe we are now servicing around half of the UK "quick sale" property market. In 2008 the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) estimated there were around 1,000 "quick sale" companies operating.  We now handle the enquiries from around half this number of companies - meaning that if you make an enquiry to a "quick sale" company, there is a strong chance you will end up speaking to us.