The Benefits of an All Cash House Sale
If you’re looking to sell your house right now, there’s hardly a better time. However, house sales can take a long time to close out, and the money isn’t always quick to show up. Leases, mortgages, rent-to-own contracts and more can turn what should be a quick and simple process into something slow and methodical. And that’s fine, for the people who have the time to spend.
If you’re trying to trade up and get a brand new house, you might need the money right now. They won’t wait the time that you might have to. So you can put your home on the market for a cash offer. Is this safe? Is it easy? Is it worth doing more than a traditional over-time offer?
Explaining the Cash Offer
A cash offer is one where a buyer agrees to pay the full price of the house up-front without any financing or over-time options. It’s the whole market price all at once. There’s no bank to go through, no loan or lease to work out and no long-term agreement or mortgage deals. The buyer comes in and agrees to an offer, then the seller (you) gets the money as fully liquid cash assets. About a quarter of all home sales happen this way, but the way these happen and what houses cash offers are mostly made on differ from the standard neighborhood or family home assets.
One type of cash offer purchase is usually made on very poor quality homes. These are bought outright by house flippers who intend to spend more money and time fixing it up and then reselling it in a better state for a profit. A cash offer ensures that they have full ownership of the house immediately and don’t have to wait out a lengthy loan payment system over years. Once it’s ixed up, they will put it on sale to make a fast profit and repeat the process.
The other end of the buyer spectrum comes from affluent investors. Real estate is an investment, property can increase in value as the market changes – and the market is very much changing in that way right now. Investors usually have a lot of cash on hand and will expedite the buying of a house with it to get the sale over with quickly so they can start utilizing it in their portfolio as an asset. This is great for homes in good condition or in excellent neighborhoods where values alone may keep regular buyers from making the same purchase.
Benefits for the Seller
Cash offers have a great benefit for the buyer. The sale closes almost immediately. No waiting around, weeks to move out – once it’s done, the deed is traded and the home belongs to the buyer. It’s just not instantaneous – about two weeks. That’s enough time to pack up everything, deal with the last utility bills, tell all the neighbors, and get one last hoorah out of the home, and then you still have another week leftover to do clean up or just get moving to a new place.
Cash offers skip the lender and can also, potentially, skip the realtor agent. This means less fees from lenders or loaners or agents who take a cut as part of their commission. You won’t spend money on marketing your home to a bidder’s market or competing in local real estate either. There are services that focus specifically on cash offer sales, and the people who want them will seek them out first. You find the buyer with a strong portfolio and offer your real estate to them. For those buyers, the quality of the home only matters in terms of their ability to mark it up.
All cash offer sales are much easier to set up for. You don’t have to do any prep work. There’s not even a need to clean the house. What you need are the hard numbers, square footage and a reasonable offer to pay. Cash buyers aren’t too likely to attend a showing or special event. At most, they may want to see it as it is: the way you live in it. It will give them a better taste for how it’s been treated and what they can expect.
There are no lenders or bank programs to go through, which means less paperwork and less headaches to get into when waiting for everything to get filed away. It’s a very straightforward process, offering much less stress than there is dealing with all the middle people who can miscommunicate, get bogged down in their own work and neglect your deal until the last stressful minute. This happens on your schedule, with what is convenient for you and the buyer first and foremost.
How do you know if you’re getting a fair price for your home? A real estate agent will often set up a quote for your property when you start working together and this will set its place in the local market as either a beginning or final bidding price. Then, that price can be negotiated by stronger buyers who have more leverage over the agent who wants to sell the home at a good enough price to make a commission. Where do your feelings count? An all-cash offer sets a price and, usually, accepts it. The buyer may have their own ideas of a price, but if you lead with a strong and factually established quote, you can keep the wiggle room low. You don’t need to be a Wall Street executive to land this sale, you just need to be honest.
Cash Offers and Us
Florida’s real estate market has some of the most pristine and high-value properties in the entire market, with plenty of amenities and access to some of the country’s best resorts, beaches and high-class cities. Learn more about how you can get the best value on your cash offer for your Florida home today!