Six Things to Consider When Working With a Cash House Buyer
When looking for possible options to sell your house fast in the market, you might stumble upon cash house buyers as another route to take. Although it’s fine to do this, you need to know a few things before taking this route.
Cash house buyers were born out of long periods of stress, frustration, and disappointment with homeowners from realtors that haven't sold their homes. The house has been listed way too long and incurred more expenses that shouldn't be a priority since the homeowner is trying to get rid of the house.
The cash house buyers make the process easy by making a faster house sale that eases the stress, extreme work, and additional expenses with the homeowners. To help you decide if cash house buyers are the right fit for you, here are some things that you should consider before working with them.
What to Consider Before Working with a Cash House Buyer?
1. Verify if cash house buyer is legit to do business
It’s the same process as hiring a real estate agent. You check their website, background history, and reviews from previous clients if all those are positive. The difference between real estate agents and cash house buyers is that cash house buyers are not well regulated, which means they have more scammers and illegitimate individuals doing business.
This is something to be careful with as a homeowner if you plan to take this route for selling your house. Even the government and real estate experts provide warning from fraudulent cash house buyers who scam their clients who lacked better information regarding this house selling option.
2. Inspect how they value your home
Fake cash home buyers will often provide an unclear value report to your home, most probably because they try to unexpectedly drops the price of your house at the very last minute, forcing the homeowner to accept a lower value of their house.
The poor professional ethics of other cash house buyers may take advantage of distress homeowners to exploit the value of their homes. Homeowners should ask how the company conducts valuation. If the cash house buyers are not properly valuing your home and making offers, that’s because they’ll drop the price of the home later on, where an accurate valuation hardly even matters.
If you notice this kind of scheme upon talking to them, consider this as a red flag and find a better company that has no hidden motive to take advantage on your part. The last thing you want to happen when selling a house is getting the lowest value you deserve.
3. Check for business permits and accreditation
You need to check their permits and accreditations to ensure if the cash house buyer is credible is through. Although they are not regulated, they still need to adhere to government laws, taxes and reporting their business’ whereabouts. You can call certain agencies to check the company’s legitimacy before doing business with them.
Also, do not underestimate small scale cash house buyers to work with you. Most likely, they have partnered with a larger professional organization to support their business. They have a higher possibility of offering better services and credible professional work.
4. Feel free to ask them for past purchases they made
There's no harm to be so sure with who you're dealing with and be straight to the point with the company. Ask for several recent houses they bought with receipts from previous customers. You may call these previous customers and inquire about their experience while working with the cash house buyers. If you only hear more positive reviews, there's nothing wrong with going ahead and working for them.
If you hear more negatives than the positives, then it's another red flag to consider right away. Especially if these customers experienced gazundering and weren't happy with the value, they got from the house they sold. Consider bailing out early than being scammed with a wrongful company that will take advantage of your house.
5. Don’t feel excited when they give you a very high offer
It makes sense why a high offer excites us when getting rid of a house immediately. That means we get a better value from our house. However, you still need to be wary when the price is too good to be true. Consider that these companies still need to make a profit involving certain costs when buying your house.
Before you say yes to the offer, check whether or not that's the full price you're getting, or any hidden charges are waiting to be revealed. Most likely, homeowners are surprised with hefty fees upon closing the sale that already seems hard to back out. Have this cleared up before you agree with the price and finalize the closing of the sale.
6. Do not get tied up with a contract
Some cash house buyer companies will offer you sign a contract, and some provisions can often be missed if you are not careful. For example, once the contract has been made, the homeowner has no right to sell the house somewhere else if the price does not meet their desired rate. This is unfair on the homeowner’s part and more advantage to the company.
This is also to avoid the company from lowering the price during the closing of the sale. They might offer you a higher price initially but then lower it down the moment the sale has been finalized. They can use this contract to force the homeowner to make the sale and have no choice to back out. Many credible companies don't offer these kinds of contracts but still deliver the best service possible.
So before you consider working with cash house buyers, you must check the red flags along with the advantages. Indeed, it might seem like the easiest route to take, but there are certain implications that you need to be careful before you consider selling your house.