Cash offers, especially those from iBuyers and other large cash buyers, can be a great way to assess the value of your property. Their initial offers are not binding, meaning you have the opportunity to see the offer and learn from it without being required to move forward. Often, the convenience and security of cash offers make them favorable to sellers who want to be able to control their next step.

What can you learn from a cash offer?

It Gives You a Floor

Cash offers give you a floor for your value. When a cash offer from an investor or an iBuyer comes in, it allows you to judge the baseline value of your house. This doesn’t mean that a cash offer can’t be a competitive offer—in fact, cash offers are often quite fair, especially taking into account the speed and security of the offers. Cash offers give a good baseline value that you can use to assess other values. Have a Keller Offers Certified Agent walk you through an offer so that you can see what the pros and cons are.

The Lesson: By learning what a cash buyer will offer, you can better evaluate other offers as they come in.

It Treats Everything Like an Investment

Whereas traditional buyers tend to look at a house as a home, and evaluate it for their personal needs, cash buyers look at a house as an investment. Getting a cash offer not only allows you to see the home from the point of view of an unbiased buyer, it also allows you to see what features a buyer values and which are not as highly valued. iBuyers and cash buyers are looking for what makes a home easy to resell, and have the lens of a seller when they inspect a house, not a buyer.

The Lesson: Cash buyers look at a home from the perspective of a seller, and their opinion of your house can give hints about where to put repair and touch-up focus.

It Pulls Everything Into Numbers

In the end, every home sale negotiation comes down to the numbers. Cash buyers move past any pretense and translate everything—closing date, repair allowance, holding costs, closing costs, and more—into numbers. Sellers can use the numbers baked into an offer to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their property.

The Lesson: Negotiations will always come down to numbers. Cash buyers can help a seller get into the mindset of maximizing the net proceeds they receive, taking into account speed and convenience.

Conclusion:

While cash buyers can’t tell you everything:

• Their opinion about the riskiness of a market and a neighborhood will affect their offer
• Their ability to sell other houses in their portfolio can impact their offer
• They are looking to make a small profit, and want to offer convenience and security in return

Cash offers give a data point—what one real buyer would be willing to pay for a property at a certain point in time. Use cash offers, guided by a Keller Offers Certified Agent, to get a great data point to learn more about your house.