TL;DR
- Expect a cash offer somewhere between roughly 50% and 85% of after-repair value. In our experience the number tracks condition almost perfectly: a gut job lands near the bottom, a move-in-ready house near the top.
- A legitimate cash buyer closes in about one to four weeks, produces proof of funds when you ask, and never requests upfront fees, wire transfers, or a signed deed before you have money in hand.
- The seven red flags: manufactured urgency, no proof of funds, a contract with blanks in it, any request for money from you, no verifiable local address, a big price drop after inspection, and no clean way to walk away.
- Cash makes sense for inherited homes, problem tenants, foreclosure timelines, and houses that need real work. It makes less sense if your Troy home is in good shape and you can wait out a listing.
- Ten minutes of homework filters out most bad actors: search the company name plus "reviews," look them up at the Oakland County Register of Deeds, check the BBB, and call two sellers who closed with them recently.
If you've typed "we buy houses" into Google after finding a flyer wedged in your storm door, here's the honest answer. Legitimate cash buyers exist. So do people running the exact same script with none of the money. The tell is almost never the offer price. It's how hard they push you to sign, whether they can prove the funds, and what they do after somebody walks through your basement.
Table of Contents
- Is "We Buy Houses" a legit company?
- How much will a cash buyer pay for a house?
- How does the cash offer process actually work?
- 7 red flags to watch for in a cash offer
- Is selling your house for cash a good idea?
- What's your next move?
- Frequently asked questions
Is "We Buy Houses" a legit company?
It isn't one company at all. It's a business model used by thousands of investors, from established local operations with an office and a decade of closings behind them to wholesalers working out of a Camry who never intend to buy your house. They intend to sell your contract to someone else.
The Better Business Bureau has heard enough complaints about this corner of real estate that it published a consumer alert on "we buy houses for cash" offers telling sellers to verify credentials before signing. Good advice in Troy, Toledo, or anywhere else. A real buyer has a physical address, a phone answered by a human, and sellers who will vouch for them.
Pro tip: Search the company name plus "reviews," then plus "reddit." Real buyers leave a paper trail: Google reviews, a BBB profile, forum threads from actual sellers. The sketchy ones have a website registered six weeks ago and stock photos of a family that doesn't exist.
How much will a cash buyer pay for a house?
In our experience, offers land between about 50% and 85% of what the house would be worth fully renovated. Condition drives almost all of it. Structurally sound but dated lands high. Foundation movement, fire damage, or fifteen years of deferred maintenance lands low, because the buyer is pricing the rehab plus the chance the rehab goes sideways.
Here's how we build the number. If you want to see it from our side of the table in more detail, our why sell your house to us for cash page walks through it condition by condition. You can also pull current Troy market data to sanity-check your renovated value before you talk to anyone.
Formula: Cash offer ≈ (after-repair value × buyer's percentage) − estimated repairs − holding and resale costs.
Illustrative scenario: a Troy colonial that would sell for $430,000 renovated. The buyer's repair list comes to $45,000 (roof, kitchen, furnace and A/C), and they need roughly $15,000 to cover holding, closing, and margin.
$430,000 × 0.70 = $301,000 $301,000 − $45,000 (repairs) − $15,000 (holding and margin) = $241,000
Same house needing only $10,000 in paint and carpet? Run it at 85%: $430,000 × 0.85 = $365,500, minus $10,000, gives you about $355,500.
Rule of thumb: multiply your realistic renovated value by 0.70 and subtract your repair list. If a cash offer comes in within about 10% of that figure, it's in the normal range. If it's 25% below, you're either looking at a lowball or the buyer sees a problem you haven't priced yet. Ask which.
| Home condition | Typical share of after-repair value | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Move-in ready, minor cosmetics | 75%-85% | Almost no rehab, buyer can resell in weeks |
| Dated but livable (1990s kitchen, worn carpet) | 65%-75% | Moderate, predictable rehab budget |
| Needs major systems (roof, HVAC, plumbing, electrical) | 55%-65% | Repair costs and permit timelines eat the margin |
| Fire, flood, or structural damage | 45%-55% | Real risk the scope doubles once walls open up |
Every buyer runs slightly different numbers, which is the whole argument for getting two or three offers before you sign one.
How does the cash offer process actually work?
Four stages: first contact, a walkthrough, a written offer, then closing at a title company. Most sellers go from phone call to funds in one to four weeks. A traditional Troy listing takes weeks just to go pending, then another 30 to 45 days while the buyer's lender orders an appraisal and underwrites the loan.
- You call or submit the address with a few details about condition. No, we don't need it clean.
- A walkthrough within a day or two, in person or by video if you're out of state.
- A written offer, usually inside 24 to 48 hours, with no obligation attached.
- Escrow opens with a title company and a title search gets ordered.
- You pick the closing date. Some sellers want next Friday. Some need 60 days to get into senior housing. A real buyer works around you.
- You sign and get paid, typically by wire the same day, with no commission or fees pulled out.
The parts nobody warns you about are the Michigan-specific ones. You'll sign a Property Transfer Affidavit at closing, which the buyer files with the City of Troy assessor. If the house was your homestead, you rescind the Principal Residence Exemption. Property taxes get prorated, and because Troy bills a summer levy in July and a winter levy in December, the proration math swings hundreds of dollars depending on which side of those dates you close. The title company handles it, but read the settlement statement line by line anyway. Also expect a final water reading and a small escrow hold for it, standard practice on Oakland County closings.
If someone is promising same-day closing with no title work, they're skipping the steps that protect you from an old lien surfacing after you've spent the money.
7 red flags to watch for in a cash offer
Nearly every bad experience we hear about traces back to one of these.
- Pressure to sign today. "This offer expires at 5pm." "I've got another seller ready." Real offers stay open for days. Manufactured urgency exists to stop you from making calls.
- No proof of funds. Ask flat out: can you show me you have the cash to close? A real buyer emails a bank verification letter the same afternoon. Dodging or getting offended is your answer.
- A contract with blanks in it. Specific price, specific closing date, specific contingencies. Not "TBD." Have a real estate attorney read it if anything reads strange. Our paperwork for a direct cash home sale guide covers what a clean agreement includes.
- Any request for money from you. No application fee, no processing fee, no deposit. Money flows toward you at closing. Always.
- No verifiable local address. A cell number and a P.O. box isn't a company. If they buy across Metro Detroit, there's an office and a name attached to it.
- A big post-inspection price cut with no explanation. Small adjustments for something genuinely new are normal. Dropping $50,000 after already walking the house is a bait-and-switch designed to keep you tied up while they shop your contract.
- No clean exit. You should be able to walk before closing without penalty. Steep cancellation penalties in a cash contract are a serious problem.
What most people miss
Sellers stare at the offer number and skip the two boring questions that actually decide whether the deal closes.
- Who is actually on the contract? Some outfits sign as a wholesaler with an assignment clause, planning to resell your contract for a fee. If their buyer falls through, so does your sale, usually a week before you were supposed to move. Ask: are you buying this yourself, or assigning it? Then look for the words "and/or assigns" next to the buyer's name on the agreement, because that's where it hides.
- Who's handling title and closing? A real transaction goes through a title company or attorney with a full title search. That search catches old contractor liens, unreleased mortgages from the 1990s, and heirs nobody mentioned. It matters most with an inherited property, where we run into title surprises constantly.
Pro tip: Ask for two or three sellers who closed in the last six months, then actually call them. Ask one question: did the price at closing match the price on the offer? A buyer with nothing to hide hands over the numbers without hesitating.
Is selling your house for cash a good idea?
It's a good idea when speed, certainty, or skipping repairs matters more than the last few percent of market value. It's a poor fit when your house shows well and you can afford to wait. A tidy, updated home in the right Troy neighborhood, particularly near the job corridor along Big Beaver Road, can draw competing offers on the open market. List it.
The math flips fast, though. Carrying a house you're not living in costs real money. Take a mortgage payment, taxes, insurance, and utilities totaling $2,600 a month. Three months on the market plus a 40-day mortgage closing is roughly four and a half months: $2,600 × 4.5 = $11,700, before you spend a dollar on the repairs a financed buyer's appraiser will demand. Compare that number against the gap between a cash offer and a listing price. Sometimes the listing still wins. Often it doesn't.
| Factor | Traditional listing | Cash sale |
|---|---|---|
| Timeline to close | 30 to 90+ days, longer if financing stalls | 7 to 30 days, on your date |
| Repairs required | Usually yes, or the price gets cut anyway | None, sold as-is |
| Agent commissions | Typically 5%-6% of the sale price | None |
| Certainty of closing | Can die over financing, appraisal, or inspection | No lender, so no financing fallout |
| Showings and open houses | Ongoing, often for weeks | One walkthrough |
| Best for | Updated homes where maximizing price is the goal | Inherited homes, needed repairs, foreclosure, tenants, out-of-state owners |
If you're dealing with tenants who stopped paying, a foreclosure sale date, or trying to close an estate sale from out of state, the traditional route usually costs more in carrying costs, commissions, and plane tickets than it nets you.
What's your next move?
Get the comparison in writing before you decide anything. Run the 70% math on your own house, ask a cash buyer for proof of funds and two references, then ask a listing agent what they'd price it at and what repairs they'd want first. Two real numbers beat a hundred hours of guessing.
We buy houses across Detroit, Troy, Livonia, Pontiac, and dozens of communities in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties. Call our team at 586-500-7161, or read through our blog first if you'd rather do your homework before you talk to anybody.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to accept the first offer a cash buyer gives me?
No. Any buyer worth dealing with expects you to shop the offer and won't penalize you for it. Collect two or three, compare them against your own 70% calculation, and treat pressure to accept on the first call as a warning sign.
Can a cash buyer purchase my house if I still have a mortgage?
Yes. The title company pays off your loan balance at closing out of the buyer's funds, and you keep whatever equity remains. It happens on most of the deals we do. Our stop foreclosure sale fast guide covers how the timing works when a lender has already scheduled a sheriff's sale.
What happens to tenants if I sell a rental property for cash?
Most cash buyers will take a property with tenants in place and honor the existing lease after closing, though it varies. Ask before you sign, and ask for it in writing. A serious investor gives you a straight answer about the lease and the security deposit transfer instead of promising to sort it out later.