The Advantages Of Selling to a Cash Buyer
For most people, selling their home is a bitter-sweet pill. On the one hand, it means saying goodbye to the place you have lived, loved, and built precious memories in. On the other hand, it is usually the first step in moving on to a new home, maybe even with a new person.
But no matter what the background is to your property sale, the actual process can be a bit laborious. In fact, in some cases, it is downright heartbreaking, especially when things fall through at the last minute. One way of reducing the chances of mishaps and disappointment is to sell your house to a cash buyer.
What Is A Cash Buyer?
A cash buyer is exactly what it sounds like, someone who is able to pay for a property purchase using their own money. However, the term is not quite as literal as some people assume it is. A cash buyer isn’t literally going to hand over a suitcase stuffed with banknotes. They might do that (if you could, wouldn’t you?), but for most cash buyers, the money will be transferred from their bank account to yours. In this scenario, being a cash buyer means that you have the necessary funds under your control and you aren’t relying on any external funding sources to make payments for the property.
It is worth noting that a buyer who is relying on the proceeds from the sale of an existing property to pay for a new one is not considered to be a cash buyer. To qualify as a cash buyer, the buyer needs to have the money required available and ready to go.
Cash Buyer Meaning
What does it mean to be a cash buyer, and how does it affect the sale process? From the perspective of both buyer and seller, there are some advantages to paying in cash. Some sellers have even been known to look exclusively for cash buyers and won’t consider selling to anyone that isn’t able to pay for the property themselves without relying on outside assistance.
Cash buyers are generally considered more reliable, and sales to cash buyers are much less likely to fall through than those with other types of buyer. The reasons for this are simple – relying on other people means that the chances of something not going to plan are increased significantly. Whether the buyer is waiting for the sale of their existing home to go through before they have the required funds, or they have a loan application pending with the bank, a buyer that is depending on someone else to provide some of the funding is more likely to run into issues.
Cash Buyer House Meaning
Many people who buy and sell property professionally, whether through buy-to-let schemes or through investing in properties directly, will only ever want to pay for a new home using cash. However you slice it, the process of buying a property can be stressful and much more involved than most people would like. It doesn’t matter if you are the buyer or the seller, having to rely on other people or institutions in order to supply some of the money for a property sale introduces more points of failure to proceedings and increases the chances of a nasty surprise.
There are also now businesses that market themselves with taglines like ‘we buy any house.’ These businesses are one of the safest bets around for anyone who wants their property sale to be as quick and painless as possible. Of course, that kind of convenience comes at a price, and while these house buying businesses can guarantee you a simple and straightforward sale, they will be paying below market-rates for your property. But, if you are looking to make a sale as quickly and effortlessly as possible, a cash house buyer is your best bet.
Cash Buyer Property
Any property can potentially be purchased by a cash buyer. From small residential homes to factories to entire blocks of flats, whenever a property is being sold, there is inevitably going to be someone who can pay for it in cash. The vast majority of business-to-business property sales are cash purchases. After all, if a business does not have the funds on hand to purchase a property, then the seller will often be wary. There are exceptions to this rule; for example, start-up businesses may well need to secure a business loan or other funding before they can invest in their first retail outlet.
For individuals buying and selling homes on the property market, the ability to buy and sell smaller and cheaper properties for cash is appealing to many people. If you are a buyer looking for a new home, then choosing something that you can pay for yourself makes it far less likely that you will be let down by an unexpected bump in the road.
Selling A House To A Cash Buyer
As we touched upon above, the biggest advantages of selling to a cash buyer are speed and security. A legitimate cash buyer will have all the resources they need already in place when they approach you, or an estate agent, about the potential purchase of a property. In most cases, the procedure that these businesses will follow when they are considering making a cash offer for your property will look something like the following.
The first step of the process will be commissioning a valuation of the property, so they have a concrete idea of what it is worth. Cash buying businesses tend to be quite thorough in this regard, even if you have commissioned your own valuation of the property recently, they will still want to conduct their own audit to make sure that they are paying an appropriate price.
Cash buying businesses will also often take into consideration several other factors that most individual buyers wouldn’t. For example, an individual looking to purchase a property might be planning on renovating it and selling it on for a profit further down the line. If this is the case, they may well consider the development potential of the property before making an offer. However, when it comes to cash buying businesses, you can be certain that they will be factoring in the property’s development potential when they arrive at their initial offer.
Something that you should be aware of if you are courting cash buying businesses for your property is that a legitimate cash buyer will never expect you to pay any fees for the valuations and surveys that they require. Some unscrupulous businesses have tried to pass these costs onto the homeowner, while others have tried to use illegitimate option agreements, which prevent you from selling your house to anyone else for a period of time.
Vetting Cash Buyers
Before you commit to selling your property to a cash buyer, you should first do your due diligence and make sure that they are on the level. First and foremost, you will want to ask them about their finances and confirm that they have the necessary funds available. This is less of an issue with cash buying businesses, and you can trust their accounting to be more reliable than the average person’s. However, irrespective of who the buyer is, you will want to confirm that they are a genuine cash buyer with the money they need already on hand.
It is also worth finding out what their motives are in purchasing the property. For individuals, this is useful information for assessing their suitability as a buyer. When you are considering selling to a property buying business, knowing what they plan to do with the property will help you to arrive at a fair price.
Finally, if you are selling to a cash buying property business, you will want to find out what kind of complaints policies they have in place and what guarantees they can offer you with regards to receiving a fair valuation. They should provide you with a mechanism for challenging their decisions if you disagree with them.
Are Property Cash Buyers Better?
This is the million-pound question, should you sell your house to a cash buyer? If you have the option of selling to a cash buyer, then it is usually advantageous for you to do so. After all, you won’t get any particular rewards by waiting for other people to supply money to a buyer. If you want your sale to be as quick and painless as possible, then a cash buying property business is going to be your best bet, although you will have to be willing to accept a below-market rate for your home.
Selling your home to a cash buyer offers many advantages. No one wants to deal with the heartbreak of a property sale that falls through at the last minute because the bank has changed their mind or because funds are not available in time. As a seller, don’t be afraid of marketing your property exclusively to cash buyers. For some people that have had bad experiences selling property in the past, this can help to keep their minds at ease.
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