You may have recently seen lots of advertisements for Sell House Fast companies on and offline. These cash home buyers promise to hand you the money for your home in as little as fourteen days, and if you have an unwanted property or one that you just need to leave quickly, this might be the right opportunity for you. However, it can be tough to know that for sure. What distinguishes reputable companies offering to buy your house quickly from those that might be ready to scam you? Take a look.
Reputable Cash Buyers Are Everywhere!
Before you begin to worry that companies offering to buy your home quickly aren’t reputable, it may help to understand that this is a big market. Cash investors and investment companies abound, and many of them are exactly as they represent themselves to be – great investors with the financing and team in place ready to buy your home as fast as legally possible. Companies (and individual investors) like this have developed a process and a team of experts that can help them quickly look at a property, determine its current value and its potential value in the future, then make a purchase offer that makes the most sense for them. Often that’s up to 80% of market value of the home, and it’s a legitimate operation that means you have a fast way to sell your home that doesn’t mean dealing with the stress of the traditional sales process.
Scammers Exist Too!
Just because the market is full of reputable cash buyers, though, doesn’t meant that there aren’t at least a few scams advertising “Sell House Fast with Us,” too! That’s why it pays to better understand the differences between what you might see in advertising and in the approach to buy your home. You want to work with a legitimate company, not one that will only create problems for you.
Watch Out for These Tactics
From the moment you call a cash home buying company, you’ll want to be aware of these potential problems.
- An Offer That’s Too Good to Be True: Most cash buyers can really only offer you up to 85% of the value of your home in order to ensure they’re making a solid investment that will result in a profit for them. If you are working with a company that makes an unrealistically high offer at the outset, you’re probably dealing with a scam of some kind. In this type of scam, the company will overpromise on the initial offer, then they promise to get the money in your hands in just a few days. Once you agree to that offer, they cut it by quite a bit when you run out of time, and you’re left between a rock and a hard place.
- Options Contracts: Another scam many people have encountered is a company that pushes you to sign paperwork that actually prevents your ability to sell to any other person. In that situation, they’ll often drop the offering price as you get further into the process with them, then you can’t legally back out because you’ve already signed an options contract with them. Reputable cash buyers won’t have you sign a contract until they have a final offer ready.
- Another Buyer: Some companies aren’t even the buyers themselves. This scam has you sign a contract with a “company,” then they look for a buyer for your home. It’s a way for them to pick up a commission fee, but the chances are good that the process won’t work well in your favour. You want to work with a company that already has cash on hand and is ready to buy from you.
If you’re going to work with a “Sell House Fast” company, just make sure you’re working with a reputable buyer who can show you that they already have financing in place and that they’ve worked with many successful buyers in the past. Simply doing your research will help you better understand which cash home buyers are ready to help you get your home sold in the next two weeks and which ones you should avoid.