SOLDorI BUY

Two ways to sell a Washington home, laid side by side.

List it on the open market, or request a cash offer from investor buyers in the Homexa® network. See both with the costs written out, then choose one. Or neither.

List it
Modern farmhouse with white board-and-batten siding, black-framed windows and a cedar-beamed front porch at sunset, with evergreens behind and a view over the water

Prepare the house, price it against real nearby sales, and list it where buyers across Puget Sound are searching.

How listing works
Cash offer
Empty sunlit room with worn hardwood floors, a single taped cardboard moving box, and a rolled patterned rug along the wall

Ask investor buyers to make an offer on the house as it stands, with no public showings and no repair list.

How cash offers work

How does the comparison work?

You get a listing plan and a cash offer request for the same house, prepared at the same time and written in the same terms, so the two can be read against each other line by line.

The two usually arrive separately: a listing presentation at the kitchen table one week, a cash buyer’s letter in the mailbox the next, each with its own math and its own assumptions about repairs and closing costs. Here both are built from the same walkthrough, and the person preparing them represents you either way.

  1. The address and your timing. A phone call or the short form is enough to begin. Rough condition helps: the roof’s age, anything you already know needs work.
  2. A walkthrough in person. Austin sees the house and notes what a buyer’s inspector would notice: the roof, the crawl space, the electrical panel, the windows, anything that has ever been wet.
  3. The listing plan. A recommended price range drawn from like-kind sales close to you, the repairs worth doing and the ones worth skipping, and an estimated net after costs.
  4. The cash offer request. With your permission, the property goes to investor buyers in the Homexa® network. A buyer who wants the house makes a written offer. Some homes draw several. Some draw none.
  5. Your decision. Both paths go on one page with the same line items. List, accept an offer, wait a season, or do nothing at all.
Residential street lined with craftsman-style homes, parked cars, and utility poles, with a snow-covered mountain rising in the distance on a clear summer day
Pierce CountyA residential street on a clear day

What changes between the two paths?

Five things, mostly: the price, the time, who deals with repairs, who walks through the house, and how sure you can be that the sale closes.

List it
Cash offer
Price
List itSet by the open market. Usually the higher of the two, provided the buyer’s lender and appraiser agree with it.
Cash offerSet by the investor’s own math: the value after repairs, less the work, the holding, the resale and a margin. Usually lower.
Time
List itPreparation, then time on the market, then several weeks of escrow while a financed buyer’s loan is approved. It moves with the season and the price.
Cash offerAs long as buyers need to look and decide. With no loan to approve, closing can often come sooner once both sides sign.
Repairs
List itYou choose what to fix before listing, then negotiate again after the buyer’s inspection report arrives.
Cash offerUsually priced into the offer. The house sells as it stands, subject to any feasibility period in the agreement.
Showings
List itPhotos online, a lockbox on the door, showings inside the hours you set, perhaps an open house on the first weekend.
Cash offerOne walkthrough to document the house, and possibly a few scheduled visits from buyers who are interested.
Certainty
List itThe widest pool of buyers, and more places for a deal to come apart, from the inspection report to the buyer’s loan approval.
Cash offerFewer contingencies. A buyer may also decide not to make an offer at all. No offer or price is guaranteed.

The full comparison, with a worked example in round numbers

Which path suits which house?

A rule of thumb only. The walkthrough and the numbers decide it.

List it

Listing usually makes sense when the house shows well, or will after modest work, and when you have a few months. A three-bedroom on South Hill with a newer roof. A Proctor District craftsman somebody has looked after for decades. A Gig Harbor house with water in the view. The open market tends to reward homes like these because the pool of buyers is wide and their lenders will finance them without fuss.

If the difference in price matters more to you than the date, start here.

Cash offer

A cash offer tends to suit houses and situations the open market handles badly. A home that needs a roof and a furnace in the same year. An estate where the heirs live in four different states. A rental with tenants in place. A move with a hard date that can’t wait on a buyer’s underwriting.

Investors price in the work and the risk, so the number is usually lower. What you may get in return is a sale with fewer conditions attached.

Where does Austin work?

Mostly in Pierce and King counties, from an office on Fryar Avenue in Sumner, a few minutes from both SR 410 and SR 167.

The same walkthrough and the same two columns apply anywhere in the state. If your house is elsewhere in Washington, call anyway. Homexa® is a network of 300+ agents across 25 states, and if a different agent is the better fit for your house, you’ll hear that directly.

Pierce County

  • Sumner
  • Puyallup and South Hill
  • Bonney Lake and Lake Tapps
  • Orting
  • Graham and Spanaway
  • Tacoma
  • Lakewood and University Place
  • Fife and Edgewood
  • Gig Harbor

King County

  • Auburn
  • Kent
  • Renton
  • Federal Way
  • Covington
  • Maple Valley
  • Enumclaw

What can’t be promised

Nobody can honestly promise a sale price, a closing date or that an investor will make an offer, so this site doesn’t. What you get is a range for each path with the costs written out, and a plain reading of any offer that arrives.

Ask for both numbers.

Send me the address and roughly when you’d want to move. I’ll come see the house, and you’ll get the listing plan and the cash offer request on the same page.

Get both numbers

Or call me at 206.940.0942
Email Austin.Hellickson@homexa.com