Frequently Asked Questions

When you need to sell your house in Florida, you may have some questions come to mind. This is common when you decide to try out a “We Buy Houses” company. Here are a few of the questions we come across in our business. If your question is not listed, feel free to call us at (305) 964-8223 and we will gladly help with anything that we can.

Some Common Questions When Selling To Legitimate House Buyers

There’s probably a lot of questions circling around your head, which is perfectly fine. With such a big move in your life, you SHOULD be asking lots of questions.

With these questions, the best thing to do is to either get on the phone with us or contact us here.

Nevertheless, below we have the most frequently asked questions and our detailed answers to those. Feel free to read, read, and read some more before contacting us (or call us right now if you’re hankering to).

Who Are You and What Do You Do?

I am Ana Garcia, the owner and founder of The Sell Fast Center LLC. I’m an avid animal lover and I go horseback riding in the Redlands in my spare time. I have been buying houses since 2015 and have bought over 300 houses in that time. I have an amazing team of people in our company who have been with us from the beginning .

We Buy Houses from people like you who are looking for a quick & fast way to sell their house. We send our cash offers directly to you, the seller, so you can skip the middle man (realtors and real estate agents) and sell directly to the cash buyer. This option allows you to keep more cash in your pocket by saving you the need to pay for commissions or closing costs incurred when you sell with the traditional way with a realtor.

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Is A “We Buy Houses” Company Good For Me?

That depends on your situation. If you are not in a hurry to sell your house, you may want to try to list it with a real estate agent or maybe even put it up for rent. However, most people that we work with have special circumstances that require them to sell fast. Some of those circumstances include tax delinquent properties, properties in probate with multiple siblings inheriting, properties in extremely bad shape, vacant properties with squatters inside, situations where the homeowner lives in another state, and the list goes on.

Even if you are not in a hurry to sell, we can still buy your house if you are simply looking for the convenience of just talking to one buyer and knowing the property is sold. Typically, a real estate agent comes with a lot of extra headache that most people really would rather just not deal with.

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Will you be buying my house or listing it?

Sometimes, our service can sound a bit confusing to some, since there aren’t many people that will advertise to actually BUY your house today! But, we’re NOT a brokerage looking to represent you and your house as an agent, list your house, and then gain a commission IF it’s sold. We want to buy it for ourselves. We are professional house buyers: We buy houses in Florida that meet our criteria. What we do afterward depends on the situation and location. We may either repair it and resell it ourselves, or keep it as a rental.

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What Is Your Offer?

This is probably the most commonly asked question. In simple terms, this is how we calculate your offer:

Market Value – Repairs – Our Minimum Profit = Your Cash Offer

The benefits of our offer consists of:

• A real buyer
• Paying all-cash
• Buying your house fast in under 2 weeks or less
• Buying your house as-is without you EVER paying for repairs or lifting a finger for cleaning
• We inherit ALL the risk, hassle, and hardship that you would have to endure if you were to list it with a real estate agent
• Providing and easy and fast process that literally only takes you one phone call to accomplish
• Providing options for your situation and free consultation to get you out and moving on to your new life
• A transparent process
• And a guaranteed sale.

…but this doesn’t come free (don’t worry, you wont ever pay a dime out of pocket). As professional homebuyers, we wouldn’t be able to provide a great service to sellers like you if we couldn’t re-sell your property for a profit.

Below is also a list of our costs when we buy your house so that we can provide a free and reliable service:

• We pay for all the closing costs (10% of the sales price)
• We pay for all the repairs to fix up your house (anywhere from $5,000-$30,000 depending on the condition)
• We handle the tenants (an eviction can cost $4,000 and 6 months)
• We pay for our cash (cash isn’t free, even for us. Wes, we use our own money, but we often borrow money from other investors as well, which enables us tp help as many homeowners as we can but can cost us anywhere between $5,000-$15,000 depending on the purchase price)
• And we need to make a gross profit of at least $19,000 to stay in business.

And in order to provide a great service we these benefits, we have to buy houses below market value (but ALWAYS a fair price). The homeowners we’ve helped are happy to sell it below market value knowing that they get a guaranteed hassle-free sale today!

Most other homebuyers won’t tell you their cost or even their profit. But we are different. We believe in transparency so that you can see for yourself that we aren’t trying to lowball anyone.

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How Do You Determine An Offer?

Good question! In simple terms, this is how we calculate your offer:

Market Value – Repairs – Our Minimum Profit = Your Cash Offer

We have already broken down some of our costs to our offer (again, you won’t pay a dime out of pocket when selling to us), but there are some factors we consider to come up with a price…most important of them all, we have to determine the value of your house.

Our process is very straightforward. We look at the location of the house, what needs to be fixed or repaired to bring it up to market value standard condition, the current condition of the home, and the values of nearby houses that have sold recently.

With these 4 factors, plus the costs of us buying and selling the house, we can come up with a fair cash offer for you.

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How Does The Cash Advance Work?

If you would like a cash advance before closing, this is very simple and easy for us to provide for you. Once we get your signed purchase agreement, we will send everything to the title company and run a RUSH TITLE SEARCH. This means we will get the title search report back within 5 days. As soon as the title search comes back clean and marketable (meaning there are no clouds on title and you are free to sell when you please), we can go ahead and drop off your cash advance that same day.

The amount of the cash advance is up to you but generally depends on your needs. Usually we can offer between a $2,000-$10,000 cash advance. In certain cases (where there is a tax deed auction scheduled, for example) we’re able to advance a lot more. If you do need an advance on your sale, just let us know and we’ll be able to structure a favorable deal for you.

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What If I Need To Sell But Can’t Move Out Yet?

That’s not a problem. We will simply set up an escrow hold-back arrangement where we hold back some of your closing funds in an escrow account and work out a post-occupancy agreement stating how long you can stay in the house after closing. The typical range for a post-occupancy agreement is between 1-3 weeks. As soon as you are out of the house, the escrow funds will be released to you.

We are also able to provide moving assistance if that is one of the issues. We will pay for the moving company to pack and ship your items either to a storage facility or to wherever to you plan to move to.

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What If I Need Help Moving? What If I Need Moving Assistance?

We’ve got you covered! This is one of the benefits we provide here at The Sell Fast Center. If you want to sell but you haven’t found a new place to move to yet or you have no idea how you’re going to pack and ship everything in the home to your new destination, we will help with that!

If you need help finding a new home before you can close, our team members will search far and wide for a place that fits your exact liking and price range. We will also help find a new rental property if you prefer to rent instead of buy. As soon as we find something you like, we can provide a cash advance to you so you can grab the place before it’s gone.

If you need help packing and moving all your things out of your home into the new destination, we can help with that too. We will pay for a moving company to come in and pack all your items and move them to wherever you need them to go. If you simply want to put everything in storage, we’ll pay for that too! We’ll pay for the first 6 months of storage so you can breath easy knowing your valuables are safe and sound.

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What Will I Have To Pay If I Work With You?

This is what makes us stand out from the traditional method of selling your house: There are NO fees or commissions when you sell your property to us. We’ll make you an offer, and if our offer works for you, then we’ll buy the property in it’s AS-IS condition and we pay for all of the costs associated so that you come out a winner! No hassles. No fees.

How we profit is when we buy the property and make our necessary repairs, we the house later for our profit. We’re taking all of the risks on whether we can sell it for a profit or not. Once we purchase the property from you, the responsibility is ours and you walk away WITHOUT the burden of the property and its’ payments.

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How Are You Different From A Real Estate Agent or A Realtor?

Real estate brokers list your house on the MLS and hope someone will buy it. They carry none of the risk while you do ALL of the heavy lifting AND risk not finding a buyer. The agent will show your house to prospective buyers (if there are any). On top of all that, they require that you make repairs to bring it up to standard market condition.

Depending on the location, the average time to sell a house is 4-8 months. And to add to on top of this, a sale with an agent is costly.

Your costs with an agent:

• Clean up and repairs (possibly $5,000 to $10,000 if you need to update anything).
• Continue paying for your mortgage every month until its sold (remember this process can take you 6 months to accomplish so if you’re mortgage is $1500 a month, you’ll end up paying $8,000 just to wait to sell).
• Pay for all the closing costs, title fees, and inspection (4% of the sales price).
• Pay for the eviction if you have bad tenants ($4,000 plus the time it takes to get rid of those bad tenants).
• And then pay for the agents commission fee (6% of the sales price).

…So with a $100,000 house, if you list it, you may end up paying around $27,000-$32,000 just to list it while still waiting all that time not knowing for sure you’ll find a buyer!

But that’s where we’re different! You can avoid all that hassle and cost and just sell directly to us, the cash buyer.

Since we’re actually the one buying the house directly from you, and we pay with all cash, we can make a decision to buy your house within a couple of hours.

We make our living by taking the risk to buy the house with our own cash, repair the house, and market it ourselves to find a buyer (which is the hard part that you never have to worry about).

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Am I Obligated To Sell To You If I Submit My Information?

There is absolutely zero obligation to you. Once you tell us a bit about your property, we’ll take a look at things, maybe set up a call with you to find out a bit more, and make you an all-cash offer that’s fair for you and fair for us. From there, it’s 100% your decision on whether or not you’d like to sell your house to us…and we won’t hassle you, we won’t harass you. It’s 100% your decision and we’ll let you decide what’s right for you.

And if you decide that right now is not a good time for you to sell, that’s alright! You can always come back to us 1 month, 6 months, even 2 years later and let us know you’re ready and you would like to proceed. There is never any rush. It’s all on your timeline.

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What Do You Do With The Houses After You Buy Them?

After we buy your house, what we do with it typically depends on the property. Sometimes we fix them up and keep them as a rental. Sometimes we simply fix them up and resell them on the market for a profit. So it varies from property to property.

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How Do I Know You Are Actually Going To Close?

Well, we’ve been in business for 6 years and we have bought over 300 houses in that time. So our track record alone should give you some confidence in our ability to close. However, during our inspection period we do have the ability to cancel a contract. In all our years buying houses since 2015, we’ve cancelled 2 contracts. That’s a 0.7% rate. And those were extreme circumstances that involved clouded title meaning we were not able to buy the property and the seller was not able to sell the property.

The reality is, when we sign a purchase agreement to buy a house, we fully intend to perform and get them closed.

If you are concerned about us cancelling the contract during the inspection period, we are happy to make you an offer with a ZERO day inspection period. However, please keep in mind that in order for us to do that, we may need to negotiate a lower purchase price to compensate for the extra risk we have to assume. A 0 day inspection period contract means you have the right to take us to court if we do not perform and close at the agreed upon price, so it is a very powerful clause available to you.

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How Does Your Home Buying Process Work?

It’s super simple!

Step 1 – Gathering Information

You can either call us at (305) 964-8223 or fill out one of the forms on our site and we will gather as much information as we can about your property and your situation. We will listen to your needs, answer any questions that you may have, and then make recommendations based on your situation. Even if that means we’re not the best option for you.

Step 2 – Cash Offer

If you decide that we’re the best option for you, we’ll present you with a cash offer for your property. If you wish to accept the offer, we’ll send a simple 4 page agreement (we hate long and complicated paperwork) that outlines our offer and everything we agreed to. This agreement can be signed electronically with Adobe Electronic Signature or we can bring it to you in person. You can also have an attorney review it for you, if you wish (we always recommend it but it is not necessary).

Step 3 – Review

During this time we will complete any inspections we have and set arrangements for cash advances. Then we will make sure the title is clean, the mortgage is taken care of, make sure HOA is updated on the transaction, and take care of any other things that may surface so that we can move on to our final step.

Step 4 – Closing

This is the easy part! We will already have your preferred choice of closing – whether at our title company’s office or at your home with a mobile notary – and we will also have your preferred choice of payment – whether it is a certified check or a wire transfer. We will coordinate on the best day and time convenient for you to sign your closing documents. Once all the documents are received and notarized, your payment will be sent out to you which you will receive either the same day or sometimes the next day depending on the time the wire transfer was sent.

It’s that simple! If you have any questions on the closing process, feel free to call us as (305) 964-8223 and will be happy to help in any way that we can.

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How Do I Get The Cash For My House?

Depending on the location of the closing (either at our title company office or at a location closer to you) there are a few ways to get paid. It typically boils down to two options: a certified cashiers check or a bank wire transfer.

1. Closing At The Title Company: When you close at the title company, all the documents are signed and notarized on site and the check or wire transfer is sent out immediately.
2. Mobile Closing: If you do not live nearby, a mobile notary will drive to you where you can sign and notarize the documents. The documents are then overnighted to us and as soon as we receive them, your check or wire transfer is immediately sent out to you.

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Curious to see what you can sell your house for today?

Fill Out The Quick Form Below To Get A No-Hassle No-Obligation All Cash Offer