Sell a House with Subsidence for Cash
A crack in the wall, a door that has started to stick, a surveyor's note about 'movement': subsidence is one of the fastest ways for a sale to fall apart. Lenders and insurers grow wary and buyers vanish. We buy houses with subsidence, historic or active, and price the movement in proportion to the facts.
- Written offer
- 24 hrs
- Survey required
- No
- Historic or active
- Either
- Completion
- 7 days
The first sign is usually small: a diagonal crack above a window, a door that no longer closes cleanly, a note in a survey. Then a buyer’s lender asks for a structural report, an insurer hesitates, and a sale that felt settled starts to slip away. Subsidence has a way of emptying a viewing list.
We buy houses with subsidence, whether the movement is long finished or still going on, and we price it against the facts rather than the fear.
The word “subsidence” frightens buyers more than most cases deserve. A great deal of it is historic and long stabilised. What stalls the sale is the buyer’s lender and insurer, and a cash purchase answers to neither.
Why subsidence stops a sale
A mortgage lender needs the property to be sound security and, crucially, insurable. A subsidence history complicates both. Buildings insurance becomes harder and dearer to arrange, structural reports get demanded, and the buyer’s lender may decline while it waits for certainty that can take months to establish.
Faced with that, ordinary buyers move on. Cash buyers do not depend on a lender or a fresh insurance policy to complete, which is why we can act where others cannot.
Historic or active: the question that matters
Almost everything turns on one distinction:
- Historic subsidence has stopped moving. Where it has been underpinned and certified, with monitoring to prove stability, it is close to a normal purchase and the discount is modest.
- Active subsidence is still moving. It needs specialist assessment, and the offer reflects the greater uncertainty, but it remains firmly within what we buy.
Tell us which you believe you have, and any history you know of. See our wider page on selling an unmortgageable property for how this sits alongside other lending problems.
Not every crack is subsidence
It is worth saying plainly: cracking is not proof of subsidence. Heave (ground swelling rather than sinking), the natural settlement of a newer extension, and thermal movement in hot and cold spells can all produce cracks that look worrying but are not structurally serious. Part of our assessment is working out what is actually happening, and now and then the answer is better news than the seller feared.
How we price a house with subsidence
We start from what the house would be worth without any history of movement, then account for the specifics:
| Situation | Typical effect on offer |
|---|---|
| Historic, underpinned and certified, insurable | 5–10% |
| Historic, underpinned, limited paperwork | 10–18% |
| Active or unresolved movement | 15–25% |
The ranges shift with the severity, the paperwork, and local values. We explain each component in your written offer, and how we calculate a cash offer sets out the method behind it.
What we need from you
- The postcode and address.
- What you know about the movement: when it appeared, whether it is ongoing, and any underpinning history.
- Any paperwork: structural reports, underpinning certificates, monitoring records, or insurance correspondence.
- What a previous buyer’s lender or surveyor said, if a sale has already fallen through.
Start an offer
If subsidence has stalled your sale, or a survey has just raised it, tell us about it. We will come back within 24 hours with a written, no-obligation offer and a plain explanation of how the movement shaped it.
Frequently asked,
plainly answered.
01 Do you actually buy houses with subsidence?
02 What is the difference between historic and active subsidence?
03 The house was underpinned years ago. Does that help?
04 Will you need a structural survey from me?
05 Insurers have flagged subsidence. Will that stop you?
06 Is it definitely subsidence, or could it be something else?
07 How fast can it complete?
Other situations
we take on.
Chain-break rescue
A collapsed UK property sale is one of the worst experiences of modern homeownership. You're weeks from completion, you've committed to an onward purchase, and suddenly your buyer has walked. If it's happened to you in the last few days, we can often still save the onward deal, but speed matters.
Read more →Non-standard construction
Airey, Cornish, Wates, BISF, Woolaway: the names of post-war housing systems that mortgage lenders treat with suspicion. If your home was built outside the usual brick-and-block tradition, your buyer's lender may simply refuse it. We buy non-standard construction property for cash, whatever the system.
Read more →Unmortgageable property
'Cash buyers only' is a line that narrows the market dramatically: for some properties, almost to zero. We specialise in the properties that mortgage lenders reject. If a bank has declined your property, or your estate agent has warned you to brace for a 'cash buyers only' listing, we're often the answer.
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