If you are considering selling your house to a cash buyer we can probably assume a few things. The house may require some repairs, have a bad situation attached to it, like a divorce or eviction, or its a combination of the two. Whatever the reason is isnt important, you are simply wondering what the process would be like selling a house for cash and you want to know if cash home buyers are legit in Pueblo and in general.

One of the first things that I think we need to explain is that not all cash home buyers are the same. Some are simply flipping paper (wholesalers), some are buying with the intention of immediately reselling without doing any of the work, some buy fix up and then sell, and others buy and simply re rent or fix up and rent. The particular house buyer you are dealing with is really going to affect the legitimacy and ability to close regardless of the house buyer you choose. Below I will describe the different types of buyers and ways to tell if cash home buyers are legit in pueblo and in general.

Wholesalers- Are These “cash home buyers” legit?

You may have noticed that I put “quotes” above when I mentioned cash house buyers and referred to wholesalers. These guys are typically the ones that do the text message marketing and direct mail, cold calling, signs around town, etc. These guys typically dont have any money per se. Their main focus is to find a person willing to sell thier house at a discount, get the property under contract by putting in a cash offer and normally they attach a lengthy inspection period attached to it.

Now a normal inspection period of you were to buy a house with financing would be this something similar to this. You put in an offer, the seller accepts your offer, you put an inspection period of about 15 days on the contract. You then as the buyer would hire an inspector, he or she would go out and do a thorough walkthrough and evaluation of the property and basically report back to the buyer anything an everything wrong with the house. Then you as the buyer would either ask the seller to cover the repairs before closing, give you a reduction in the price, or you simply walk away from the deal.

But when this wholesaler representing themselves as a cash home buyer comes in it is supposed to be an all cash deal, as is and should close when the seller wants. So if this is supposed to be an all cash deal as is, then why does the investor or wholesaler put in an inspection period? Its because they simply want to find an actual cash home buyer to step into thier place in the contract, they get paid a fee for lining up the cash buyer and you as the seller and then everyone gets what they want.

The problem usually lies in the inspection period. Some of the newer investors are putting in inspection periods of upwards of 21-30 days. This is when the alarm should start to go off. In my opinion this type of cash home buyer is not legit. Like any profession there are good and bad people. Its ok for someone to be a wholesaler and its even more ok to sell to them if you get a fair price and they close. But the legit ones will usually have an inspection period of 5-7 days or sooner.

Are The Flippers/Fix And Flippers Cash Home Buyers Legit?

Unless you are super familiar with real estate or the terminologies you really wouldnt know the difference between a flipper and a fix and flipper. These types of cash home buyers can be legit for sure. The difference is one of these buyers (flippers) buys the property, cleans it out or does a demo of the inside, and then sells it wholesale usually to another cash house buyer that wants to live in it, buy it for a child, or a various amount of reasons. The main point is that they will buy the house from you, but then just resell. Either way these types of buyers will close if they are legit and you will know by the inspection period they give you on contract. These buyers shouldnt have one at all. Unless they plan on “finding” something on the inspection and they attempt to renegotiate with you. Thats another matter.

Fix and flippers are cash home buyers that can be legit as well. These buyers will buy it from you, fix it up and then sell it or rent it. This is our strategy actually. We do not do the buy and sell thing typically because we like to keep our guys busy. Once again this type of buyer will close if legit. You can once again tell by the inspection period if they even give one at all. Typically we will have a 1-5 day inspection period and a 7-10 day close unless you need more time.

Pueblo Landlords Can Be Legit Cash Buyers

These guys or gals will be buying in cash sometimes but a majority of the time they are working with financing. They put about 20-30% down payment down or pay cash. They can typically offer a bit more because of them basing thier profit off of a different set of numbers and not buy and sell numbers. This cash buyer will generally give pretty good offers but a hurdle that could arise is if they are getting financing, the house needs to have minimal repairs. So if your wanting to sell a fixer upper this buyer may not be for you.

Check Reviews From Past House Sellers

One of the things that we have always prided ourselves on was our positive reviews. We have plenty of positive reviews on google, facebook, and the bbb. All in all we probably have close to 70+ 5 star reviews. I do not say this to brag, just that we definitely always strive to provide a great house selling experience. So the way for you to vet the legitimacy of a buyer would be to look up the company. Doesnt matter what type of buyer is buying your home, you can always look up thier company info on sites like the BBB, Facebook, Google, Etc. If these buyers are out there screwing people over and they have a bad online reputation I would recommend staying away.

However if they have a solid reputation then that is something to be considered as well. There are good and bad apples in every profession. Just because you are selling to a cash house buyer doesnt mean you have to take that big of a hit in terms of price.