What is an assisted sale, and when is it better than selling on the open market?

The thing most people get wrong about it

The most common misunderstanding is that you are selling your house to the investor. You are not. There is only one sale in the whole arrangement, and it is the one at the end, from you to a normal buyer.

The investor is not acting as a purchaser. They are acting as somebody who funds and runs a refurbishment project on a house they do not own, in return for a share of the value they add. Your name stays on the title the whole way through.

You are not selling your house to an investor. You are hiring one, and paying them out of the result.

How it works, step by step

1. The conversation and the fit test

   The investor looks at the house and at your situation, and works out whether an assisted sale is genuinely the right structure. It suits cosmetic and presentation work with clear room for uplift. It does not rescue a house with problems refurbishment cannot solve.

2. You agree a floor price and a fee

   The floor price is the figure you will receive out of the eventual sale, before the investor's costs and fee. It is fixed before any work starts and the whole arrangement is built around it. The fee is usually one of three shapes: a flat amount above your floor, a percentage share of the uplift after costs, often somewhere in the region of forty to sixty per cent, or a mixture of the two with the share capped.

3. A solicitor draws up the agreement

   A profit share agreement sets out your floor price, the scope of the works, how the fee is calculated, and what happens if things go wrong. This is not a document to accept off the shelf. It is drawn up and explained by a property solicitor, and you should have your own.

4. The investor's position is registered

   Because they are spending real money on a house they do not own, the investor protects their interest at the Land Registry, usually with a legal charge, sometimes with a formal option to purchase and a registered notice. In practice this means the house cannot be sold or remortgaged in a way that ignores the agreement.

5. The work is done

   The investor funds and manages the refurbishment. Usually that is cosmetic: kitchen, bathroom, decoration, flooring, clearance. You pay nothing up front and you organise nothing.

6. The house is marketed and sold

   Once finished, it is sold in the ordinary way through an estate agent, to an ordinary buyer, on an ordinary mortgage. Because you never sold to the investor, none of the complications around quick resales apply.

7. The money is split at completion

   The buyer's money clears any existing mortgage and the costs of sale. You receive your agreed floor price. Whatever uplift remains covers the refurbishment costs and the investor's agreed fee or share.

Why a seller would choose this

• A higher sale price, because the house sells refurbished and properly presented rather than tired and discounted.
• Nothing to pay up front and nothing to manage. No trades, no skips, no chasing, no snagging list.
• A minimum agreed in advance. The floor price tells you the least you will walk away with when the house sells.
• No fee if it does not sell. Properly structured, the investor is paid on a completed sale and not otherwise.

It tends to suit inherited houses where the family live too far away to manage works, houses that look unsellable because of clutter rather than anything structural, and sellers whose position is simply "I want what it is really worth, but I cannot do the work".

When it is the wrong choice

I would rather talk you out of one of these than into it, so here is the honest side.

• You need the money now. An assisted sale takes a few months: works, then marketing, then a normal conveyancing process. If you are up against a deadline, route one, a straight sale at a discount, is the honest answer.
• The problem is not cosmetic. If the house has structural movement, a short lease, knotweed or a title problem, a new kitchen does not fix it and the numbers will not work.
• You do not understand the contract. If you cannot explain in your own words what your floor price is, how costs are treated, and exactly how the fee is calculated, do not sign it. That is a failure of explanation on the investor's part, not a failure of understanding on yours.
• There is not enough room in it. If the gap between the as is value and the finished value is thin, there is nothing to share and everyone is better off doing something simpler.

What to insist on

Three things, whoever you do this with, and I would say the same if you were doing it with somebody else.

Your own solicitor, not theirs. A written agreement you have read properly and had explained, covering the floor price, the works, the fee, and what happens if the sale does not complete. And a clear answer on how their interest is being registered against your house, because that is the part that most affects you if the relationship goes wrong.

I hold anti money laundering supervision with HMRC, membership of the Property Redress Scheme, ICO registration and professional indemnity cover, and I will give you the numbers to check any of it without being asked. I have written separately on how to check that anyone in this line of work is legitimate, including the checks that would catch me out if I were not.