Selling Guides

How We Calculate Your Cash Offer

The three inputs behind every cash offer

We are not going to publish a percentage on this page, and you should be sceptical of any buyer who quotes one before seeing your house. A fixed figure offered sight unseen is a marketing number, not an offer. What does not change is the arithmetic, and you can check our work on all three inputs.

1. After-repair value

What the house would sell for on the open market once it is fixed up. This is not a guess. It comes from recent sales of comparable homes in your neighbourhood - similar size, similar condition after work, sold in the last few months. Ask any buyer which comparables they used. If they will not tell you, that itself is the answer.

2. Repair cost

What it takes to get the house to that condition. Roof, systems, foundation, water damage, code violations, and the kitchen and baths that decide resale price. This is the input sellers most often disagree with, which is exactly why it is worth walking the property together - so you can see what is being counted and challenge anything that looks inflated.

3. Margin

What remains has to cover purchase costs, carrying costs while the work is done, resale costs, and the risk that either of the first two numbers is wrong. That margin is how a cash buyer stays in business. It is also the honest reason a cash offer sits below what a finished house fetches on the open market: you are trading part of the top-line price for speed, certainty, and not doing the work yourself.

What the difference actually buys you

The comparison that matters is not offer versus asking price. It is what lands in your account either way, on a date you can rely on. A traditional sale carries costs that never appear on the listing:

• Agent commission - typically 5 to 6 percent of the sale price.
• Repairs before listing, plus whatever the buyer's inspection renegotiates afterwards.
• Holding costs while it sits - mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities. Homes sold by owner have run a median of roughly 55 days on market against 42 for agent-listed homes, and that clock runs before the 30-to-45 day financing timeline, not instead of it.
• Closing costs, which the seller normally pays.
• The risk it collapses when a buyer's mortgage falls through, putting you back at the beginning.

Our side of that ledger is deliberately short: no commission, no repairs, no showings, no financing contingency, we cover the closing costs, and you choose the closing date inside a 7 to 21 day window.

How to compare the two properly

Take the price an agent quotes you and subtract the commission, the repairs they say you need, the closing costs, and the carrying costs for however many months they estimate it will take. Compare that figure - not the headline - against the cash offer. Sometimes the listing still wins. Sometimes it does not. Either way you are finally comparing the same thing.

When you should not sell to a cash buyer

If your house is in good condition, you are not under time pressure, and you can absorb a few months of uncertainty, list it. A clean, market-ready home with a patient owner nets more on the open market than any cash buyer will pay, and we would rather tell you that on the phone than waste your afternoon.

A cash sale earns its keep in the other situations: the house needs work you cannot fund, the timeline is not yours to control, there are liens, violations or tenants in the way, or certainty simply matters more to you than the last few percent.

What happens if you ask us for a number

We look at the property, work through the three inputs above, and give you a written offer within 24 to 48 hours. No fee, and no obligation to accept. If you want to take that number to an agent for a second opinion, do - a buyer confident in their arithmetic has no reason to rush you.