List it if any of this is true
- The house is in decent shape and would photograph well with a weekend of cleaning
- You have three months and no financial pressure
- You can afford the repairs it needs, or it doesn't need many
- It's vacant, or your tenant is cooperative and on a short-term arrangement
- There are no title complications, open permits, or code cases
In that scenario an agent will beat us and it isn't close. Retail buyers pay retail prices, and the
commission is a smaller number than the discount we'd need. Anyone who tells you otherwise is
selling you something.
A cash sale usually wins if any of this is true
- The repair bill is large enough that you'd have to borrow to do it
- There's an unpermitted addition or converted garage that will trip an appraisal
- The property is tenant-occupied and you don't want to deal with vacating it
- You're carrying costs on a house nobody lives in
- There's a deadline — a probate, a foreclosure sale date, a job move, a divorce settlement
- A previous escrow already fell apart over condition
- The idea of strangers walking through the house every weekend is unbearable
The comparison nobody does properly
Most people compare our offer to the Zillow estimate. That's not the comparison. The right one is
our offer against the net proceeds of a listing — list price, minus repairs, minus
commission, minus seller closing costs, minus however many months of mortgage, taxes, insurance and
utilities it takes to get there, minus whatever a retail buyer negotiates off after their inspection.
Do that arithmetic on paper for your house. It's the only version that tells you anything, and it
frequently surprises people in both directions.
The middle option people forget
You can list it as-is with an agent, priced for investors, and let the market bid. That takes longer
and carries no certainty of closing, but on a property with strong land value it sometimes beats both
a quick cash sale and a traditional retail listing. A good local agent will tell you if yours is that
property. We'll tell you too.
