Hello, everybody. This is Alex from Coastal Edge Homebuyers. Today, we’re going to talk about junky ugly houses. If you have a house in Chesapeake, Virginia, and it’s full of junk, things that you’ve been accumulating over the years, or maybe the house was rented out – you’d been renting it out for years. Maybe it was a second or a third home, and over the years, it’s accumulated a lot of things in it. Some of them belong to you, possibly, and some maybe belonged to tenants who’ve been living there over years. Maybe it’s time for you to settle down or retire. Maybe you’re getting up to that age where you don’t want to deal with tenants anymore. The house had been rented out, but it’s getting in bad shape and you just don’t have the time and the desire or the funds to actually do a full rehab and put it up on the retail market.
So, what do you do? Well, you have a couple of different options here. Besides continuing to rent it out, the other options are to do some type of a rehab and sell it on the retail market through a real estate agent, or you can skip the agents and the commissions and sell it straight up for cash. We can give you a cash offer, this is what we do. We are home cash buyers. So, these are the options that you have for that old house. Now, it doesn’t matter what the condition is, what we do is cash offers. And if the house is paid off, we even have some other types of offers for you, which can get you even more money for the house. If you’re willing to wait and don’t want a lump sum, we can explain all these options to you. It’s very quick and easy.
And depending on your particular situation and how fast or easy you want this process to be, we’re going to recommend the best option for you. So, if you want to go with the first option, which is to continue to rent it, yes, you can absolutely do that. And you have to deal with the same things you’ve been dealing with through the years, and you may be tired of that already. Maybe it’s time to “hang up the boots” and just enjoy your retirement. So, if you want to sell through a real estate agent, usually that works for houses that are at least lightly or fully rehabded. If you have the time, the funds, and the contractors to do that, or you do it yourself, you can go that route. It will fetch top dollar, especially if you do a full rehab and then put it up immediately on the retail market. You can sign up an agreement with an agent, usually these are for six months. The real estate agent will represent you in the sale. You’re going to pay them commission, which is usually 6% of the total sale. For those of you that like math, if you have a $300,000 house, that would be $18,000 directly going to the agent immediately upon the sale. That’s what they will get. This is the norm in the industry. And of course, you have to go through multiple showings. The closing will happen anywhere between one to three or four months, depending on how the house is priced. If it’s priced a little bit high, on the higher end on the market, based on your location and the level of rehab of the house, it will stay on the market longer.
Today, we’re talking March 2022, houses are staying in the market in our area of Hampton Roads, usually between 45 and 90 days. Some are selling very quickly, again, depends on how the rehab is done and what the pricing level is. So, if you go the real estate agent route, the house will sell, but for top price you’ll need to do a full rehab. All right. And how much does that cost? Well, it depends. Prices vary all the time, it could be $30,000, it could be $60,000. It just depends on how many things need to be done. Usually, a minimum of light rehab is necessary to be done, which means – paint, carpets, flooring, all the obvious problems, inspection has to be done, etc. And that’s the process with a real estate agent.
Now, if you do a light rehab, you’re not going to get top dollar for the house. There’s no way for that to happen, because if I’m a buyer and I go on the market today to look for a house to buy, if there is a fully rehabbed house, even if it’s a little bit more, $10,000 or $20,000 more, it may not make that much of a difference on a potential buyer’s budget because to the bank it is not that much of a difference. And they (the potential buyer) will probably go with the house that is better renovated or more recently renovated, compared to a light rehab for an older house like yours. Now, you have to do, obviously, do cleaning, if you work with a real estate agent. You got to handle also all utility bills (holding costs). We call these costs of holding the house while it’s on the market, or while it’s being prepared to be put on the market. These include mortgage payments, if there’s any mortgage left, utility bills, and any other maintenance costs to actually prepare the property for sale. And of course, you have the cost to actually prep and stage the house up for showings. This may be a problem with that if you are living in it, or if you do not like to have a lot of people coming and going to your house, obviously. So, in some cases, that may not be your best option. Now, what else could you do (to sell the house)? Well, you can sell it for cash. And this is exactly where we can come in and make you a fair cash offer on the spot. This is what we specialize in. We buy houses with cash and we buy in Chesapeake, Virginia, and anywhere in the surrounding cities. Basically, we work in all the seven main cities of Hampton Roads.
So, we’re going to look at the house. We’re going to do our due diligence. We’re going to evaluate it inside and out, and we’re going to give you a fair cash offer, on the spot. It doesn’t matter what the condition of the house is. Some people are concern about this and they want to do a lot of cleaning before they show it, like they say, “put a lipstick on it”, this doesn’t work with us for the simple reason that we’re looking at the structure of the house more than anything. It doesn’t matter how many things you have accumulated there. It doesn’t matter how ugly or junky the house may be. Or maybe this is just the house of your childhood and you have millions of great memory there. We’ll look objectively at everything and we’re going to give you the best possible offer based on the current structural condition of the house and the location of it, and of course, the current market.
So, this is our way of buying. You’re going to get a fair cash offer on the spot. That’s a quick and easy way out. We offer the convenience and speed of a cash offer, versus any other type of offer you will get, which will take longer for the house to sell. So, it all depends on what your timeline is, what your desire is, or if you have any monetary challenges or anything of that nature that can define what is the best option for you. If we buy a house from you, we will buy it as is. Any condition, it doesn’t matter how old it is, really, none of it matters. All that is important is the cash offer we’re going to give to you, which would be fair. We don’t do low ball offers.
The offer it’s going to be based on the current condition and the market situation and the location of the house. So, if you want to find out what your offer will be for your house in Chesapeake, just give us a call. We buy houses in Chesapeake and anywhere in Hampton Roads. We’re Coastal Edge Homebuyers, and you can reach us at (757) 414-7117. Call us today to find out your options. Take care.