Interview with Bryce Rasmussen, REALTOR®
How is selling my home for cash a good idea?
For certain people, there’s definitely value to selling your house for cash. Maybe you have a tenant who has destroyed the property and you live out of state. We’ve bought properties where the tenant is still in there, and we’ve done the eviction for them. If it’s an estate property and some owners don’t have the money for the repairs, they don’t want to deal with it, the property is in disarray, they want to leave stuff behind, there’s a lot of advantages to a certain niche market for selling your house for cash.
Tell me a quick story about a time you helped someone sell their home for cash because the tenant had done damage to the property.
We actually bought the property with the tenant still in there. They were just done with it; the tenant hadn’t been paying. So, we took on the property and handled the eviction. So, we just freed that seller from his issue of not being able to collect payments. He was having a hard time making his mortgage payment because the tenant wasn’t paying. We just took the whole situation over and dealt with the tenant and did the eviction for him.
About how long did that process take for the seller?
We can close in 3-5 days. We can make it simple.
Tell me a short story about a time that you’ve helped a seller sell their home for cash when it was an estate home?
Sometimes there’s a bunch of stuff in the property that’s been collected over the years, and it’s overwhelming when you come back and you’re trying to figure out what to do with everything, and the property hasn’t been maintained. I’ve dealt with multiple people who have come in, some were like, hey, we want to take what we want, all the sentimental stuff. Then they just leave the rest behind, and we handle it, and it frees them from the burden of that. A lot of times they have a lot of things going on in their own lives and it’s hard to just pause everything you have going on, to come back here and deal with this. Also sometimes with siblings, it’s just an easier transaction for when you have multiple people involved in it. We’ve done that a lot of times now.
What would be another example of when selling your home for cash would be a fast and easy solution?
Sometimes divorce situations create the need to sell quickly, and I mean, I’ve run into a lot of properties where there’s half projects done here, half projects done there, and nobody’s going to finish it. Also, job relocation, all of a sudden, they need to move somewhere else, or maybe to take care of a parent. A lot of these scenarios come up where they just need to sell the property quickly and they don’t have the time or money, or don’t want to deal with the property. That’s where a cash offer with somebody that is experienced and has the manpower and the crew to come and remodel these properties and get them back to their former glory and then sold for retail value.
These homes that have projects that are undone, or they haven’t been kept up, those aren’t eligible for sale through a normal listing, correct? Without being fixed first, brought up to code first, essentially?
For certain types of loans, most first-time home retail buyers are looking for a property that’s move-in ready or maybe a paint and carpet type of deal. A lot of loans will restrict repairs that aren’t done, like VA and FHA. There are some loan programs that will allow you to purchase it. It’s just most buyers that are buying a retail property, sometimes are okay with the paint and carpet type deal, but a lot of times they’re not equipped, or don’t want to take on a project to that magnitude.
You also mentioned dealing with estate homes. Could someone from out- of-state, maybe their parents lived here, but they live out of state. Can they reach out to you and have you handle the property if they don’t live in the state?
Yeah. We’d be happy to go over there, assess things for them, take videos, show them what’s going on, get them in touch with a probate attorney. We can guide them through the whole process. That’s whether they would want to list with us or just decide to take a cash offer. That’s the one benefit: we can give them both options. If you do this, if you make these repairs and clean the house out, we can list it for this much, or you can just leave it alone as-is and sell it for this much. It gives the seller flexibility on which route they would like to go. But we can help them through the process.
Fantastic. Is there ever a time that it’s illegal to sell a home for cash?
No. It’s never illegal to sell a house for cash, unless it’s not yours. Which does happen actually. But no, it’s not illegal to sell a house for cash.
Can you speak to the dangers, or what you would recommend when dealing with those types of call and email offers?
Yeah. Again, with that, you’re only getting one option there, from one person. They’re coming in, obviously they’re looking to buy it, fix it up, and make a profit, which they should, if they put up the money, and the time, and the crew. But if you go with an agent that can give you both options, if you decide to go the cash route, great. If you say, you know what, I’d like to do a few repairs or get the thing ready and then list it, if that makes more sense. It gives you options, where if you just go with one investor that sends you a letter, he’s not going to be giving you options of whether you could list it and get this much or other options. The flexibility of that just gives power back to the seller or the personal representative to make the proper decision.
Yeah, I also heard a rumor that often those people are trying to purchase a home to then turn it into a rental. Is that a myth, or it doesn’t matter? Or it could be anything?
They could do that too. That’s true. They could buy it, fix it up, and sell it. They could buy it and turn it into a rental. Yeah, there’s a good chance either, most likely one of those two is happening. I mean, they could buy it and move into it themselves potentially. But most investors are either looking to buy and renovate, resale or flip known as flipping, or buy it and rent it.
In closing, when selling a home for cash, do those sales ever fall through?
That’s another thing with dealing with some of these people that call you or email you. A lot of them don’t have the cash to buy the house, and they’re just wholesalers, which all they’re trying to do is get your house under contract and sell it to someone else, and make some profit in between, which doesn’t net you the most amount of money. Then if they can’t find a buyer, then they terminate the deal. Dealing with somebody that can show you that they have the proof of funds to buy the property, if you’re going to go the investor route, is definitely something I recommend.