If you are in the market to sell your home, you might think that listing your home with a real estate agent is your only option. Typically, that is the most common way people choose to sell their homes. According to the latest report by the National Association of Realtors®, the 2021 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 90% of sellers hired an agent to sell their home. Not every sale fits this traditional model and there are other options for selling your home, including direct home buyers.
What exactly is a direct home buyer?
Direct home buyers are individuals or companies who buy houses directly from property owners and pay cash, rather than finance the property through a conventional consumer loan. They will often purchase homes or apartment buildings in as-is condition and close within days, rather than months. Anna Buys Houses is a direct home buyer based in the Omaha area and purchases properties in Nebraska and the surrounding Midwest and Rocky Mountain states.
Do direct home buyers really pay with cash? Yes, they will bring cash to closing and you won’t risk your deal falling through due to failed funding. They may use funds in their own bank account, but there are other ways they can bring cash to closing. There are times when direct home buyers may use non-conventional funding. This could include funding from a pre-established line of credit with a bank they work frequently with. Or it may be by using a commercial bank loan with a trusted lender that can close in just a few days. It could even be by using a loan from a private money lender or partner that can typically close in about 24 hours. The important distinction is that none of these types of loans require the extensive underwriting and delays that a conventional consumer mortgage loan requires.
Advantages of selling to a direct home buyer
One of the biggest advantages of selling to a direct home buyer is that you can avoid many of the hassles and headaches that come with traditional sales methods. For example, you won’t have to worry about making repairs or staging your home for showings. And, because direct home buyers are usually investors who are looking for fixer-uppers, they’re often more willing to accept a property as-is. This can save you time and money that you would otherwise have to spend on preparing your home for sale.
The process is often quicker than working with an agent. This is because there’s no need to go through the process of listing your home and waiting for someone to make an offer, then scheduling appraisals, and inspections and hoping the financing will come through from the buyer. Instead, you simply sell your home to the direct home buyer and close on a timeline that works best for you. Flexibility to close when you want to close is one of the primary reasons sellers choose to work with a direct home buyer.
Another benefit of working with a direct home buyer is that you won’t have to pay commissions, fees, or closing costs. Because there’s no middleman involved, selling your home to a direct buyer can be faster and easier than traditional methods. This can be a huge relief if you’re facing foreclosure or need to sell your home for other personal, health, or financial reasons.
Disadvantages of selling to a direct home buyer
The biggest disadvantage when working with a direct home buyer is that you likely won’t get as much for your home as you would if you sold it through an agent. Agents typically help to negotiate a higher price for their clients. Direct home buyers are taking a risk on the property, particularly if they are planning to renovate the home and sell it for a profit. Given market fluctuations and changing interest rates, their offers tend to be conservative, and they will usually make a lower offer to help manage the risk of their investment.
There are some direct home buyers who are high-pressure salespeople who may try to take advantage of someone in a situation where they need to sell quickly. It’s important to screen who you plan to sell to carefully. Check references and their financial situation to ensure that you are working with a reputable company that will follow through on their promise to purchase your home.
How Anna Buys Houses helps
At Anna Buys Houses we help people in a variety of situations assess the option that works best for them. We recently purchased a home from a client who inherited a property she didn’t want and that needed a lot of TLC. It was an agent who brought us the opportunity to purchase this home, because it needed significant repairs and updating, and the client didn’t feel like it would make a good home for open houses. Because the home was in Nebraska and this client lived out-of-state in Ohio, she didn’t want to go through the lengthy process of making multiple trips to Omaha to make repairs, clean out the home, and then place it on the market. She felt the situation was too challenging for her to manage from afar. Our as-is purchase relieved this client of the burden of worrying about how she was going to handle the significant task of selling her parents’ lovely, yet dated, home in a timely way.
We at Anna Buys Houses don’t always buy the properties that people contact us about. In some cases, we will refer you to a realtor or other services that would be a better fit for your situation. For example, we recently had a seller contact us about her $500,000+ home that was in immaculate condition. We shared that we could close quickly, but that our offer would be less than what she could get if she listed it the traditional way with an agent, because we would simply need to turn around and list it ourselves on the market, accounting for our holding costs and the risk of the market potentially changing. In this seller’s situation, getting more for the home was more important that closing on a specific day, so she decided to list with an agent, which in our opinion was a wise decision. We do truly want what’s best for the seller, even if it means we aren’t able to buy every home that comes our way.
Working with Anna Buys Houses
It’s true that we may offer less than the market value of your home. When making an offer we look at the location of the property, the current condition of the property (including any repairs that are needed), and the values of comparable houses sold in your area recently. We take all this information into consideration and come up with a fair price. We make a no-obligation offer, which you can accept or decline. The reason we offer less than market value is that we need to cover the expense of repairs and renovations to get the property ready to sell or rent. We never pressure you to accept our offer. We’re taking a risk, just like you, and we want your experience to be a positive one!
Anna Buys Houses is willing and able to help people of all ages, but we specialize in helping seniors and their families with the complex process of transitioning into senior care. Given the experiences that some of our staff have had with our own parents, our hearts go out to other adult children trying to find a way to help their senior parents as they transition into a care community. Sometimes seniors need to sell their home to help pay for a senior living community or they need to find a safer environment without stairs or a lot of maintenance. That’s where we come in, to share resources to help ease the transition. We have an informational website, Anna Helps Seniors, which provides helpful information on a variety of senior-related topics.
If you are in a situation where a direct home buyer like Anna Buys Houses might make sense, job relocation, pending foreclosure, divorce, vacant property, a parent needing to sell to move into senior care—whatever your circumstance—give us a call. We’d be happy to discuss your options and how we might be able to help.
Contact us today with any questions you have about your property, our process, and whether a direct sale is a good option for you.