National Homeliars

In common with many people, we are trying to sell a house at a very difficult time.

It's a four-bedroomed detached house, which was valued by different estate agents at up to £200,000, but we decided not to be too greedy, and placed it at £185,000.

The market had ground to a halt, and the people who showed interest in our house were dependent on selling their own properties, so our sale was in the doldrums.

I told our estate agent, Winkworth, that we accepted that we were prepared to take a heavy cut on the price, and I asked if it would help if we did something imaginative, such as handing over £20,000 in cashback immediately after the sale.

That way, I thought, we could help someone to find the deposit, or simply give them a cheaply financed loan via their mortgage.

I was told that this wouldn't work, and that I should cut the price by £5,000.

At this time, I also circulated the housebuying companies, including National Homebuyers, that were advertising heavily. We received some silly offers (including one that sounded distinctly shady from a gentleman in Bradford) and some that we certainly didn't dismiss out of hand.

Predictably, cutting the price by £5,000 was a pointless gesture, so within a couple of months of going on the market, we made a dramatic cut to £157,000.

Naturally, this did attract new interest, but with no money available for finance, no one was in a position to proceed.

Then out of the blue came a written offer from National Homebuyers for £150,000. I checked their website, which said that they made offers after a property had been subject to a drive-by by a chartered surveyor, and that unlike other housebuying companies, they didn't try to hold vendors to ransom by suddenly reducing their offer.

We decided to bite the bullet, wrote accepting the offer, and sent the deeds to our solicitors.

A few days later, we had a call from National Homebuyers, asking us, susprisingly, for all of the details that we had already given them in writing about the house.

The caller told us we would hear from them later about the details of how the sale would proceed.

The follow-up, however, was of a very different complexion.

National Homebuyers said they were dropping their offer to £107,000 - take it or leave it.

I kept my temper, but I was, excusably, very angry. I can imagine the effect that an experience of this nature would have on some desperate couple, who thought that for a tolerable sacrifice, they had found an escape through National Homebuyers.