Part exchange with new build

[Maybenexttime08]

Has anybody successfully part exchanged their house? I would love to hear if / how it works, and whether it is ever worth it given the fact you may not get a good value on your home?

We part-exchanged eight years ago. House was valued by three agents at £165k - we accepted £155k from the developer. The build was slightly delayed, and it was a big relief knowing that we wouldn't lose our buyer due to that. House sold a few months later for £134k, so we did rather well out of it! (we'd bought the house seven years earlier for £145k. Not sure why it didn't fetch a higher price on sale, as we'd improved it. However, again it was nice that it wasn't our problem).

I part exchanged a 2 bedroom flat about 3 years ago with Taylor Wimpey. I was a little wary of it initially but I had a really good experience in the end and would absolutely do it again if I was ever in the same situation. The price that they gave me was fair. They had a home report done by a reputable local company and offered me the full home report value without any argument.

Flats weren't selling too well in my area at that time so I actually ended up getting more than I think I would have if I'd sold it myself. When they eventually sold it on it, they sold it for £5k less than they gave me for it. They also paid all of the legal fees so I think it saved me close to 10k overall (legal fees plus the 5k less it sold for). I also didn't have to worry about trying to sell it myself and all the stress that can bring.

We’ve done it on 2 properties now. We did get decent offers on our house, but it meant we couldn’t take advantage of other developers offers.
The fact we saved a fortune on agency fees, and it made the process so stress free was well worth it

I refused a part exchange with one builder because they'd only offer the valuation which I knew was too low as my old house was in a popular spot. I put it on the market and it sold for 20% more. That was worth over £30k and I was proved right about the true value of my old home. Some builders force you to part exchange, others are more flexible. Shop around.

We part exchanged our old house with Charles Church for our current house back in 2013. For us, it was a really straight forward and stress free experience. We had no estate agent fees to pay and we stayed in our old house until our house was compete

We had tried to sell our old house a few months before but took it off the market as we were only getting investors and speculators rather than serious buyers . As we were not desperately to move at that point, we decided to wait until the market picked up but then a new phase was released on a development in a town near us and we saw the opportunity to buy a decent sized forever home.

We’d had our old house valued at £275K by three different agents when we’d tried to sell. Charles Church offered us £240K initially, but with some negotiation, we managed to get them to up it to £250K and to drop the price of our new house by £20K. We also got about £8k worth of upgrades on our new house (nicer, kitchen, appliances and better quality carpet and tiles) so we actually came out on top. Charles Church put our old house on with 2 agents and sold it in 6 days to a young couple! I was like where were they before??!

I think we either timed things perfectly or they must have been struggling to sell on the development at that point because they were really keen to negotiate with us. I think things are a bit different however, especially as our town has become quite pricey. Friends who bought after us said they found it much harder to get a deal and some developments had queues of people waiting to reserve and lots of cash buyers apparently.