If you seek to sell your house fast in Augusta GA, you have most likely come across several cash home buyers or we buy houses type of company. Since selling your Augusta house is most likely one of the biggest transactions you will have to do in your lifetime, it’s important to vet the cash buyers correctly. Here are a few tips for vetting the buyer to make sure they are legitimate.
How many houses they have bought recently. What’s their level of experience?
Everyone has to start somewhere, but you don’t really want to be working with a person or company that is just starting out and has never actually bought a house. Personally I would let another homeowner take a chance on a brand new buyer. This is because there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to sell your house fast in Augusta. Without a decent level of experience, a new cash buyer may not be able to get to the closing with you. Many newbie cash home buyers may put on a disguise and tell you that they have lots of experience when they don’t.
So you want to ask them specific questions: how many houses they buy per month; what are some addresses of their current projects? Can they show you a few before and after pictures of the houses in Augusta that they bought and fixed up. If they hesitated too long or couldn’t provide concrete information, that’s a major red flag.
Ask for earnest money to be put down
Earnest money is the money deposited by the cash buyer into an escrow account, typically with a closing attorney. The purpose of earnest money is to show commitment to buy your Augusta house. If the cash buyer decides to back out of the deal at the last minute for reasons that is not your fault, you will be entitled to keep their earnest money. A legitimate home buyer will not be afraid to put down earnest money as they understand that this is part of the game and they plan to follow through with the agreement. A shaky buyer however will not be comfortable putting their money at risk.
How much earnest money is enough? That’s a great question to ask your buyer. “How much can you put down as earnest money?” and see how they respond. General rule of thumb is earnest money equals 1% of purchase price. $100k home => $1000 in earnest money. However this is not a hard requirement, the more earnest money your buyer is willing to put down, the more serious they are towards closing on the house.
Online presence and testimonials/reviews
Nowadays it is very easy for a random person to call themselves a “cash home buyer”. It is literally a self-proclaimed title and doesn’t require any credentials to have it. You generally don’t know if you are working with a legitimate house buyer or just a bad actor if you don’t do more research. A serious cash buyer should have a good online presence, because most pretenders won’t be bothered to set up their business branding properly.
Do a quick Google Search for your cash buyer name and their LLC and see what comes up. At the very least they need to have a website to showcase who they are and what they do. You will also want to check to see if their website has any customer reviews or testimonials. Google reviews are a plus if they come up during your search. Pay close attention to any negative reviews they you may see.
Summary
That’s the three tips to keep in mind when vetting a cash home buyer in Augusta. To summarize: 1) ask them about their level of experience and information on previous purchases, 2) they need to put down earnest money, and 3) Do an in depth online search on the potential home buyer name and their company.
About us
We’re HBI Home Solutions, the most trusted home buyers in the CSRA area. We buy houses in Augusta and surrounding cities. If you are serious about selling your house fast in Augusta, please check out our company website HBI Home Solutions at www.sellhousesfastga.com, link in the description. Fill out the form on our website about your house and we will quickly get in touch with you to give you your cash offer within hours.