When You Shouldn't Sell Your House to Us

We turn down houses every month. Not because we cannot buy them — because the seller would be worse off if we did, and they usually have not been told that by anyone else who called them.

The house is already renovated

This is the clearest one. If the kitchen and bathrooms have been done, the roof and systems are sound, and a buyer with a normal mortgage could get it through an appraisal without conditions, there is nothing for us to add. Our business is buying houses that need work and doing that work. On a house that needs none, we would just be a buyer paying less than the market would.

List it. In San Diego County, a renovated house in good condition does not sit, and even after commission you will net more than any as-is cash offer, including ours. If you want, get the cash offer anyway and use it as your floor — but do not take it because it arrived first.

It only needs cosmetic work

Paint, carpet, landscaping, and a deep clean are the highest-return work you can do to a house, and they are cheap relative to what they add. A cash as-is offer prices the house as though that work has not been done, so selling as-is to avoid a weekend of painting is an expensive way to skip a weekend of painting.

The line we use is whether the problem is behind the walls. Original electrical, a roof at the end of its life, cast iron drains, foundation movement, or unpermitted square footage are structural problems that stop a conventional sale — those are ours. Dated worktops and tired carpet are not. If you are not sure which side your house falls on, the three things to check are the roof, the panel, and whether any of the square footage was ever permitted.

You have time and no real pressure

What a cash buyer sells is certainty and speed. If you do not need either, you are paying for something you are not using. A conventional sale takes somewhere between 30 and 60 days once it is in escrow, plus however long the house takes to go under contract — and if you can absorb that timeline without it costing you anything, absorb it.

The version of this that catches people out is thinking they are under pressure when they are not. An inherited house that the estate can afford to carry, or a job that starts in four months, is not a deadline. Be honest with yourself about which one you are in before you decide.

You owe more than the house is worth

If the mortgage balance, arrears, and any liens add up to more than the house will sell for, no cash buyer can simply buy it. The sale needs the lender to approve taking less than it is owed, which is a short sale — a process that takes months, involves the lender's own timeline, and is not guaranteed to be approved at all.

Anyone promising you a 7 to 10 day close in that situation either has not looked at your payoff or is not planning to close. Talk to your lender's loss mitigation department and a HUD-approved housing counsellor first. Their help costs nothing, and if keeping the house is possible, that beats every version of selling it.

When selling to us is the right call

The house needs real work — systems, roof, foundation, permits — and you do not want to fund it, manage it, or carry the risk of what turns up once the walls are open. Or the timeline is genuinely the constraint: a trustee's sale date, a court order, an estate bleeding money on taxes and insurance on an empty house, or a purchase on the other end that falls apart if this one is late.

In those cases the trade makes sense. You give up some price and you get a date you can plan around, no repairs, no showings, and a number that does not move between acceptance and closing.

If you are not sure which category you are in, call and describe the house. We will tell you which one it is, including when the answer is that you should list it.

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