New service aims to secure and speed-up sales

A former estate agent-turned-online auctioneer has launched a new service that aims to speed up and secure sales.

Stuart Collar-Brown, co-founder and director of My Auction has started a new ventured called Assured Sales.

It aims to improve the efficiency of a property transaction by providing a comprehensive information pack, prepared by a solicitor, to the potential buyer before they make an offer. 

The pack includes all the relevant documents(including searches a buyer needs to make an informed decision about the property. 

This also allows them to get finances in place and commit to making an offer.

Once an offer is accepted, the buyer and seller enter into an assured agreement which gives both parties exclusivity until exchange of contracts happens. 

The buyer then pays 1.5% towards the purchase price, leaving 8.5% to pay on exchange, and the solicitors work together towards the agreed exchange date. 

This aims to reduce the time between offer acceptance and exchange to a matter of weeks rather than months.

Each party also agrees to certain parameters, meaning that if one party decides to withdraw from the sale or purchase, both sides are protected from gazumping and gazundering. 

If the seller withdraws, they must pay repay the buyer’s 1.5% plus an administration fee as well as legal costs of £1,250 plus VAT and 0.5% of the sale price to the estate agent.
If the buyer withdraws, they forfeit their 1.5% - split equally between the agent and seller- and must pay an admin fee of £,1250 plus VAT.

Stuart Collar-Brown, founder of Assured Sales, said: “I’ve been in the property industry for over 20 years both as an estate agent and property auctioneer, so I know what works, and what doesn’t. It’s this depth of knowledge that has led to the creation of Assured Sales - a private treaty sales process where both parties enter into an assured agreement which provides protection and security on both sides from either one simply changing their mind and withdrawing from the sale.”

Assured’s goal is to work in partnership with estate agents.

Collar-Brown added: “Assured Sales will provide an additional service that estate agents can offer their clients but the benefits of the service will not cost the seller more than it would to sell on the open market – this is very important to us as it is providing value for money and a genuine alternative method of sale.

“Buying and selling a property is one of the most stressful things to do and the current system is set up in such a way that both parties have to endure months of stress and worry, not knowing if the other is going to pull out at any given moment or if a higher offer might be made to the seller.

“But it doesn’t have to cause so much uncertainty and worry. With Assured Sales, we are taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way to help improve the current process and remove the pain points. By making small changes to the current process, we intend to make a huge difference to people’s lives and their experience of buying and selling a property.”