Guides / Selling
Sell as-is or spend two weeks first? A straight comparison
Four routes to the same outcome. Here's what each one really costs you.
6 min read
There is no universally right answer here — it depends how much time you have and how much the difference in price is worth to you. But the options are usually presented vaguely, so here they are with numbers attached.
| Route | Cost | Your time | Elapsed time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sell as-is to a cash buyer | 15–25% below market | Almost none | 2–4 weeks |
| List as-is on the open market | £0, likely lower offers | Low | Unpredictable |
| Do it yourself | £1,600–£5,000 in materials | 6–10 weekends | 6–12 weeks |
| Hire trades separately | £4,000–£16,000 | Constant co-ordination | 4–8 weeks |
| Managed refresh | £3,800–£17,000 fixed | One conversation | Under 2 weeks |
Sell as-is to a quick-sale company
Genuinely fast and genuinely certain. On a £500,000 property, a 20% discount is £100,000 — an enormous amount to pay for four weeks of speed. It makes sense in a small number of situations: a chain collapsing, a repossession deadline, a property with real structural problems.
Do it yourself
Cheapest on paper and by far the most expensive in weeks. The failure mode isn't quality, it's stall: the project runs out of weekends at 70% done and the property gets listed half-finished.
Hire trades separately
Cheaper per trade, and you become the project manager. Every gap between trades is a dead week, and if the carpet fitter arrives before the decorator has finished, someone repaints a skirting.
A managed refresh
One team, one price agreed before anything starts, the jobs done in the right order, and a property ready to photograph in under two weeks. You pay slightly more than the sum of the trades to not run it yourself.
The question isn't which is cheapest. It's which one actually gets finished before you need to list.
The Presentable way
We do all of the above as one job: painting, small repairs, carpets, garden tidy and a deep clean, for one fixed price, finished in less than two weeks.