What Percentage of Market Value Do Cash Buyers Pay?

Genuine UK cash buying companies pay between 75% and 85% of your home's open market value, with around 80% being the realistic midpoint in 2026. On a property worth £272,000 — close to the UK average, according to the June 2026 HM Land Registry House Price Index — that means a cash offer of roughly £204,000 to £231,000. Anything advertised above about 85% deserves hard scrutiny, because the funded, reputable buyers all operate inside that band. The discount buys you a completion in 7 to 28 days instead of the 16 to 24 weeks a normal sale takes, and it buys you certainty.

The number they quote, and the number you actually get

Ask ten cash buying companies what they pay and most will give you a comfortable-sounding answer. "Up to 85%." "Market-leading offers." "Sometimes more, depending on the property." The word doing the work in all of those sentences is "up to".

Here is what the market actually looks like in 2026. The genuinely funded buyers — the ones with money sitting in an account rather than an investor list they need to shop your house to — cluster tightly between 75% and 85% of open market value. The midpoint is about 80%. A well-presented, mortgageable, easily resold house in a decent postcode can reach 83–85%. A leasehold flat with a short lease, cladding questions or a structural issue might come in at 70–75%, and some buyers will decline it entirely.

• 75–85%Genuine offer range
• ~80%Realistic midpoint
• 7–28 daysTypical completion
• £0Fees you should pay

That band has been remarkably stable. It does not move much with house prices, because it is not really a price — it is a margin structure. Which brings us to the part most articles skip.

Where the missing 20% actually goes

Sellers often assume the gap between 80% and 100% is the company's profit. It isn't, and understanding why makes you a much better negotiator.

Take a house valued at £272,000 on the open market. A cash buyer offering 80% pays £217,600. Their costs on that purchase, before they have earned a penny:

Cost	Typical figure	Why
Stamp duty (additional property rates)	£13,900	Companies pay the higher rate on every purchase, including the surcharge
Your legal fees + theirs	£2,000–£2,800	Reputable buyers cover both sides
Survey, searches, title checks	£800–£1,500	Compressed into days, so it costs more
Refurbishment / remedial works	£5,000–£25,000	Varies enormously by condition
Holding costs while reselling	£3,000–£6,000	Council tax, insurance, utilities, finance for 4–8 months
Selling costs on resale	£3,500–£5,000	Agent commission and legals second time round

Add that up and you are somewhere near £29,000 to £54,000 of cost on a single transaction. Against a £54,400 discount, the actual margin on a straightforward house is often £15,000–£25,000. On a difficult one it can be almost nothing, which is exactly why difficult properties get lower offers rather than higher ones.

What moves you up or down the band

Two identical valuations can produce offers £20,000 apart. These are the levers, roughly in order of impact.

Resaleability

A three-bed semi in a town with steady demand is the easiest thing in the world for a cash buyer to sell on. A four-storey converted mill flat above a takeaway is not. Standard, mortgageable, family-shaped housing gets the top of the band.

Region and local liquidity

Zoopla's July 2026 data put the national average at 42 days to find a buyer, but that average hides a lot. Melton in the East Midlands is running at 76 days, up 21 days on the year before. Where resale is slow, the buyer's holding costs rise and the offer falls. In parts of the North West and Yorkshire where stock moves quickly, offers sit noticeably higher than the national picture would suggest.

Tenure and legal condition

Freehold beats leasehold. A lease over 90 years beats one at 72. Anything with a restriction on the title, an unregistered boundary, a missing building regulations certificate or an ongoing dispute pulls the number down — sometimes fairly, sometimes as a negotiating lever.

Condition

Cash buyers price refurbishment conservatively, because they are buying with limited access and a compressed timescale. Structural movement, Japanese knotweed, spray foam insulation in the loft and non-standard construction all trigger the biggest deductions.

How much competition they think they face

This one is entirely in your control and it is worth more than most sellers realise.

• Standard freehold house, good area, three offers on the table84%
• Standard freehold house, one offer, seller in a hurry77%
• Leasehold flat, 80-year lease, service charge arrears74%
• Probate property, dated, structurally sound79%
• Property with subsidence history and underpinning70%

The comparison almost nobody does properly

"80% of value" sounds brutal until you run the full sum. Most comparisons stop at the headline price and the agent's commission, which flatters the open market badly.

Here is the honest version, using that £272,000 home with a £120,000 mortgage outstanding on a 5.6% rate — roughly the average two-year fix in August 2026.

	Estate agent sale	Cash sale at 82%
Asking price	£272,000	—
Realistic agreed price	£262,000 (after one reduction)	£223,000
Agent commission (1.3% + VAT)	−£4,087	£0
Your conveyancing	−£1,400	£0 (buyer pays)
EPC, photography, sundries	−£300	£0
Mortgage interest while selling	−£2,800 (5 months)	−£420 (3 weeks)
Council tax, insurance, utilities	−£1,250	−£190
Net in your hand	£252,163	£222,390
Time from decision to money	~22 weeks	~3 weeks
Chance it collapses	Roughly 1 in 4	Low, with a funded buyer

The real gap is about £29,800, not £49,000. Spread across the 19 weeks of time you save, that works out at roughly £1,570 for each week of certainty.

Whether that is a good trade depends entirely on your situation, and I would not pretend otherwise. If you have nowhere you need to be and no deadline, it is a poor trade. If you are paying a mortgage on an empty inherited house, funding care fees at £1,200 a week, or holding together a chain that will collapse next Friday, it can be the cheapest £29,800 you ever spend.

One caveat worth stating plainly: that table assumes the agent sale completes. Around a quarter to a third of agreed sales in England and Wales fall through. If yours is the one that does, you restart the 22 weeks — and every week of carrying costs runs again.

Six offers I would walk away from

Not every company that calls itself a cash buyer is one. These are the patterns that reliably end badly.

1. Anything above 85% quoted before a valuation

A funded buyer cannot make 90% work on a normal house. The maths above shows why. A 90% offer is almost always a hook — the figure comes down at "survey stage", usually a week before you were due to complete, when you have already given notice on something.

2. "We'll find you a buyer"

That is broking, not buying. Your details get passed to an investor list, and the price is whatever someone eventually offers. It is a legitimate business model, but it is not a cash sale and it carries none of the certainty you are paying for.

3. Any request for money up front

Valuation fees, survey fees, "administration" fees, legal retainers. A genuine cash buyer covers all of it. If someone asks you for money to buy your house, the transaction has already gone wrong.

4. A tie-in period or exclusivity agreement

Some companies ask you to sign a six or eight-week exclusivity clause. That removes your only real leverage — the ability to walk — and it is the standard setup for a late price reduction.

5. An auction dressed as a cash sale

If the paperwork mentions a reservation fee, a reservation agreement or a 56-day completion, you are being routed into the Modern Method of Auction, not sold to a cash buyer. The Property Ombudsman flagged this specifically in 2026: auctions account for about 2% of home sales but 9% of all residential sales complaints, with confusion over fees and commitment points the recurring theme.

6. Pressure to decide today

"This offer is valid for 24 hours" is a sales technique, not a funding constraint. Cash does not expire overnight.

How to verify a buyer in about ten minutes

Do this before you engage, not after. It is quick and it filters out most of the market.

1. Companies House. Search the exact trading name. Look at incorporation date, filed accounts and whether the balance sheet plausibly supports buying houses. A company incorporated eight months ago with £100 of share capital is not buying your home with its own money.
2. The NAPB. The National Association of Property Buyers requires members to be registered with a redress scheme and to follow a code of practice. Membership is not a guarantee, but it is a meaningful filter, and it is checkable on their register rather than on the company's own website.
3. Redress scheme. Ask which scheme they belong to — The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme — and then verify it directly with that scheme. Logos on a homepage prove nothing.
4. Proof of funds. Ask for a dated bank statement or a solicitor's certificate of funds. A polite, funded buyer will send it. Everyone else will explain why they can't.
5. The solicitor question. Ask who is acting for them and ring that firm to confirm they are instructed. Insist on choosing your own solicitor, or at minimum an independent one from a panel.
6. Reviews, read properly. Ignore the star rating. Read the one and two-star reviews and look for a single pattern: did the price change after the offer was accepted?

When a cash sale is the wrong choice

We sell speed at Ready Steady Sell, and we still turn people away when the numbers don't work. If any of these describe you, sell on the open market.

• You have time and no financial pressure. If the house can sit on the market for five months without costing you sleep or money, the open market will pay you more. Take the extra £30,000.
• Your equity is thin. If you owe £200,000 on a £250,000 house, an 80% offer leaves you barely anything and may not clear the mortgage plus redemption charges at all. Work out your redemption figure first.
• The house is genuinely desirable. Period cottages, well-located family homes in catchment areas, anything with a queue of buyers behind it — a cash sale gives away value you were always going to capture.
• The problem has a cheaper fix. A short lease can be extended. Knotweed can be treated with an insurance-backed guarantee. Missing building regs can be covered by indemnity for a couple of hundred pounds. Fixing the defect and selling normally often beats accepting a 72% offer because of it.
• You only have one offer. Not a reason to avoid a cash sale — a reason to go and get two more first.

There is also a middle route that too few sellers consider: put the house on the open market at a sensible price for six to eight weeks with a vetted cash offer sitting in your back pocket as a floor. You keep the upside and you keep the deadline. Our guide to selling your house fast covers how to run both in parallel without either buyer walking.

How to get the top of the band rather than the bottom

The difference between 76% and 84% on a £272,000 house is £21,760. It is worth an afternoon's work.

Get three or four offers, always. A single company negotiating against itself has no reason to stretch. Three companies who know they are being compared will. This is the highest-return thing on the list by a wide margin. Our comparison of the best house buying companies in the UK is a reasonable starting shortlist.

Establish the market value independently first. You cannot judge a percentage without a denominator. Get two agent valuations and cross-check against sold prices on the Land Registry for your street — not asking prices, which are aspiration. Our house valuation guide walks through the method, and there is broader market context in our industry data.

Remove uncertainty before they ask. Have the EPC, the title register, any guarantees, the FENSA certificates and (for leasehold) the management pack ready on day one. Every unanswered question is priced as a risk.

Don't lead with your deadline. "I need to complete by the 30th or I lose the purchase" is the most expensive sentence in the process. Establish the price first, discuss timing second.

Get the no-fee position in writing. No agent commission, no legal fees, no valuation charge, no deduction at completion. Confirmed by email before you instruct anyone.

Push back once, specifically. "Two other funded buyers have offered £X. Can you match it?" beats "is that your best?" every time. If the buyer has room, a specific competing number is what releases it.

What the process actually looks like, day by day

Sellers ask about the percentage and forget to ask about the sequence, which is where sales go wrong. A funded purchase runs roughly like this.

Stage	Timing	What should happen
Enquiry and desktop valuation	Day 0–1	Indicative range based on Land Registry sold prices and local comparables. Treat any figure given before an inspection as provisional.
Inspection	Day 2–5	A physical visit, or a RICS surveyor. If a company will buy without seeing the property, expect the price to change later.
Formal offer	Day 5–7	In writing, with the conditions stated. This is the point to insist on the price-lock wording.
Solicitors instructed, searches ordered	Day 7–10	Buyer pays. Local authority search is the usual bottleneck; some councils return in 3 days, some in 5 weeks.
Enquiries and title	Day 10–20	Where delays actually come from. Missing certificates and leasehold packs are the two usual culprits.
Exchange and completion	Day 14–28	Often same-day on a cash purchase. Funds land with your solicitor and reach you within 24 hours.

If a buyer's timeline slips past 28 days without a title or search reason you can point to, ask directly whether the funds are in place. Delay is the most common early symptom of a purchase being re-packaged to a third party.

Seven situations where the discount pays for itself

The percentage only means something against your alternative. These are the cases where the sum genuinely works.

• An empty inherited house. Council tax on long-term empty homes can be charged at a premium of up to 100% after one year, and unoccupied-property insurance costs more than standard cover. Two years of holding an empty house can quietly cost £8,000–£12,000.
• Funding care fees. Self-funded residential care commonly runs £1,100–£1,600 a week. Five months of open-market selling is a five-figure sum on its own.
• A chain about to collapse. If your purchase falls with your sale, you lose the survey, the searches and often the mortgage offer with it — £2,000–£3,000 of sunk cost plus the property you wanted.
• Divorce or separation. Every extra month is another month of joint liability, and often another month of legal fees on top.
• Repossession proceedings. Once a hearing date is set, speed is worth more than price. A completed sale before the hearing protects your equity; a repossession sale rarely does.
• Serious structural or legal defects. If the house is unmortgageable, the open market is not really available to you — the comparison is between cash buyers, not between cash and agent.
• Relocation with a deadline. Paying a mortgage and rent simultaneously costs most households £1,500–£2,500 a month.

Frequently asked questions

Do cash buyers ever pay full market value?

No — not any buyer who is actually buying with their own money and completing in weeks. If a company genuinely paid 100%, it would lose money on every purchase after stamp duty and resale costs. Offers advertised at or near full value are either subject to conditions that reduce them later, or the company is finding a buyer for you rather than buying itself.

How quickly can a cash sale actually complete?

Seven days is achievable with clean freehold title and a solicitor who moves. Fourteen to 28 days is more typical, and leasehold usually takes longer because the management pack sits with the freeholder. Compare that with 16 to 24 weeks on the open market, or 5 to 6 months from listing to completion on Zoopla's 2026 figures.

Can I sell an inherited property before probate is granted?

You can market it and agree a sale, but you cannot complete until the grant of probate is issued, which currently takes around 8 to 16 weeks. A decent cash buyer will agree the price, hold it, and complete within days of the grant landing. Ask specifically whether they will re-value at that point — some do, and that is where the price quietly drops.

Is the offer negotiable?

Yes, more than most sellers assume. There is usually room of a few percentage points, and it moves fastest when you have a competing written offer or when you can disprove a specific deduction — a builder's quote showing the roof is £4,000 rather than the £12,000 they assumed, for example.

What about the companies advertising 90% or 95%?

Read the terms. In practice they are usually one of three things: a lead generation site passing you to investors, an assisted-sale or part-purchase model where you wait for the open market anyway, or a Modern Method of Auction listing where a buyer's reservation fee of 4–5% plus VAT sits on top. None of them is a 90% cash purchase.

Will I pay any fees at all?

With a genuine cash buyer, none. They cover your legal costs, their own, the survey and the searches. If your existing mortgage carries an early repayment charge you will still pay that, so check your redemption statement before agreeing a date.

Does the percentage change if I need a very fast completion?

It shouldn't, and with a properly funded buyer it doesn't — their cost of capital over three weeks versus six is trivial. If a company reduces the offer because you asked for speed, treat that as information about the company rather than about your house.

Where this leaves you

Treat 75–85% as the real market and 80–82% as the number to beat. Anything higher needs proving, anything lower needs explaining. Judge the offer on net proceeds and on time, not on the percentage in isolation, and never accept a first offer from a single company.

Ready Steady Sell was founded by Lisa Hayes to give sellers the comparison the industry would rather they didn't have. We are not paid to push you towards a cash sale — if the open market suits you better, we will tell you. If jargon in an offer letter is doing work you can't see, our property jargon guide decodes it, and our page on cash house buyers explains how the funded buyers are structured.

Start with an honest valuation, gather three offers, and make the decision with the full sum in front of you.