The buyer for the property your client cannot sell.
Every professional in property meets the same moment: a client with a house or flat that ordinary buyers cannot buy. A survey that found movement. An estate with a house nobody has entered in years. A lease that has dipped under 80 years. We buy exactly that property, for cash, with our own funds, on a firm date. This page is for the people who meet those clients first.
Who this is for
You are likely here because you have a client, or an instruction, that has hit a wall. The property is real, the seller is genuine, and yet no mortgaged buyer can complete on it. We are a principal cash buyer: we buy with our own money, take title ourselves, and carry the risk from completion onwards. That means no lender to satisfy, no valuation to fail and no chain to collapse.
Each of the pages below is written for a specific profession, because the moment you meet these clients, and the rules you work under, are different.
- Estate agents The survey has just killed a sale and you are holding an instruction you cannot sell.
- Solicitors and conveyancers The grant is in and the property is the slow, awkward part of the estate.
- Surveyors and engineers You have written the report that ends a mortgaged sale, and the owner asks what now.
- Managing agents and freeholders A flat in the block has a lease under 80 years, or the building has no EWS1.
What we buy, and what we do not
We are most useful where the property, not the seller, is the problem. The list is short on purpose.
We buy
- Probate and inherited property, especially where it has been left for years
- Property that has just failed a survey: subsidence, damp, structural movement, retentions
- Short leases, with the lease exactly as it stands
- Flats with cladding, no EWS1, or a B2 rating
- Non-standard construction, including RAAC and PRC systems
- Derelict, empty and uninhabitable property
- Fire and flood damage, repairs undone
- Tenanted property, with tenants in situ
We do not buy
- Anything outside England and Wales, save by exception
- New-build or near-new stock with nothing wrong with it
- Property where the seller wants full open-market value and has time to get it. We will tell you, and them, honestly
If you are not sure, send it anyway. A wrong referral costs you nothing and we would rather say no quickly than leave you guessing.
How it works
- You send the property. Postcode, the situation in a sentence, and whether your client has agreed to be contacted. Ninety seconds on the form below.
- We come back to you within one working day. If your client has not yet agreed to be contacted, we speak only to you. Nothing about them is needed until they say yes.
- A written offer within 24 hours of speaking to the seller. With the reasoning behind it, so you can put it on file and your client can see how the figure was reached.
- Exchange and completion on a date that suits the client. In straightforward cases, exchange within days and completion in about a week. On probate, we wait for the grant and complete once it is issued.
Our written offer is the figure that completes. We do not reduce it before exchange, which is the complaint most often made about this sector and the one we are built to avoid.
Introductions and fees, stated plainly
Where an estate agent, managing agent or auctioneer refers a seller to us and we go on to complete, we pay a fixed introduction fee, agreed in writing before completion, and paid only if we complete. There is no fee to the seller, ever.
Two things follow from that. First, your client must be told about the fee. For estate agents this is a regulatory requirement under the National Trading Standards guidance on referral fees, and we will give you wording you can use. Second, we never contact a seller who has not agreed to it: the referral form asks, and the answer is recorded before anything else happens.
Solicitors and surveyors operate under their own conduct rules, and many prefer no fee arrangement at all. That is entirely fine. The referral works the same way, and the client gets the same service.
Who you are dealing with
RPJ Property Group Ltd is registered at Companies House, number 14164927, and run by Reuben John, who reviews every property himself and is the person you will speak to. We buy with our own funds as a principal, not as a broker or a lead generator, and proof of funds is available on request for any property we make an offer on.
We follow the principles of the National Association of Property Buyers and the Property Ombudsman in how we deal with sellers. You can read how we work and who we are, and call 020 7088 8300 if you would rather talk before you refer.