How to Tell a Legitimate Cash Home Buyer From a Scam
Six questions that separate a real cash buyer from someone who will waste your time or take your house. Use them on us too.
Search “sell my house fast” and you’ll get dozens of companies that look identical. Same stock photo of a smiling couple. Same promise of a fast, fair, no-obligation offer. Some of them are real businesses. Some are one person with a website who will tie up your house and try to resell the contract. A few are worse than that.
Here is how to tell them apart. Six questions, each one answerable in a single phone call. Ask us the same six.
1. Will you close in your own name, or assign the contract?
This is the most useful question on the list, and most sellers never ask it.
Some buyers put your house under contract with no intention of buying it. They resell the contract to another investor for a fee. That practice is called wholesaling. It is legal, and some wholesalers are honest about it.
The problem is what happens when nobody buys the contract. The person you signed with may come back and ask for a lower price. Or they may walk away, and you have lost weeks. You also end up selling to somebody you never met and never screened.
A buyer who closes in their own name with their own money has no such exit. If they sign, they buy.
What a good answer sounds like: “We close in our own name. We are the buyer.” A vague answer, or an explanation of why assignment is good for you, tells you what you need to know.
2. Can you show me proof of funds?
A real cash buyer can show you a bank statement or a proof-of-funds letter without hesitating. They get asked this constantly.
If someone stalls, gets offended, or says they will provide it “at closing,” that is a signal. Money that exists is easy to demonstrate.
3. Where will we close?
The answer should be a licensed title company, every time.
Title companies are not a formality. They run the title search that finds liens and heirship problems. They hold the money in escrow so it is not sitting in a stranger’s account. They record the deed. They are a neutral third party who answers to neither of you.
Be careful of anyone who wants to close at your kitchen table with a notary they brought along, or who suggests skipping the title company to “save time and money.” That is where the worst outcomes happen.
4. Is there any fee, at any point?
The answer should be no.
A legitimate cash buyer makes money on the property, not on you. There is no fee for the offer, no fee for the walkthrough, no application fee, no “processing” fee, and no charge if you say no.
The Federal Trade Commission’s guidance on mortgage relief scams lists advance fees as a core warning sign, and it applies here too. Anyone charging you money up front to help you sell or to stop a foreclosure is a problem.
5. Can my attorney read the contract?
Yes should be the immediate answer. Ideally they encourage it.
A purchase agreement from a straightforward buyer is short, often one or two pages. An attorney can read it in a few minutes. If a buyer discourages legal review, creates urgency to sign today, or tells you a lawyer will “just complicate things,” stop.
Watch the deadline too. A written offer that expires in a few hours is a pressure tactic, not a business necessity. Real offers hold long enough for you to think.
6. When did you inspect the property?
This one is subtle and it matters.
Some buyers give you a number over the phone before seeing the house. It sounds great. Then they inspect during an “option period,” find things, and come back with a lower number. The high first offer was never real. It existed to get your signature.
A buyer who walks the property first and then makes the offer has no reason to renegotiate. Ask when the inspection happens relative to the offer, and ask directly whether the price can change later.
The things you should never sign
A few arrangements cause real damage, and they show up most often when someone is behind on payments or facing a foreclosure sale.
Never sign over your deed in exchange for a promise that you can keep living there, rent it back, or buy it back later. Once the deed transfers, you do not own the house. Promises made alongside that transfer are very hard to enforce and often were never meant to be kept.
Never agree to send your mortgage payments to anyone other than your servicer. No legitimate party needs your payments routed through them.
Never stop communicating with your lender because someone told you to. Your servicer is required to work with you on loss mitigation options, and cutting off that conversation removes your best protections.
If something has already been signed and it feels wrong, the Texas Attorney General’s consumer protection division accepts complaints, and TexasLawHelp.org, run by the Texas Legal Services Center, offers free legal information and a path to legal aid.
Free help that has no financial stake in your decision
If you are behind on payments, talk to a housing counselor before you talk to any buyer, including us. A HUD-approved housing counselor provides free foreclosure counseling and does not earn anything based on what you decide. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau explains what your servicer is obligated to consider.
A counselor may find an option that keeps you in your home. That is a better outcome than any sale, and you should rule it out before selling.
How to check that an offer is fair
Screening the company is one thing. Judging the number is another.
A fair offer survives comparison. Ask the buyer for the addresses of the comparable sales they used and their repair estimate broken into categories. Then do two things:
- Look up those comparable sales yourself. They are public information.
- Ask a local agent what your house would list for and what you would net after repairs, commission, and a few months of carrying costs.
If the buyer’s number holds up next to an agent’s honest net, it is a real number. If the buyer will not show you how they got there, that is your answer.
You should also know that a cash sale and a listing are different products. One trades some price ceiling for speed, certainty, and no out-of-pocket cost. The other takes longer and asks you to fund repairs, but it reaches the full retail market. Neither is a scam. Choosing wrong for your situation is the actual risk.
Use these on us
We are a cash buyer. Everything above applies to us, and we would rather you check.
We close in our own name at a licensed Austin title company. We charge nothing at any stage. We inspect before we make the offer, so the number does not change afterward. Every offer includes the comparable sales and the repair math. We will hand you the contract and tell you to have an attorney read it.
And we say this to roughly a third of the people who call: if your house shows well, you can wait a few months, and you can fund some cosmetic work, list it with a good agent. You will likely net more. We would rather be the company you recommend than the company that talked you into the wrong decision.
Get a Fair Cash Offer on Your Austin House
Tell us about the property and we'll call you back with a no-obligation cash offer, usually within 24 hours.
Three fields. No obligation, and we never share your info.
Get Your Fair Cash Offer
No fees. No obligation. We respond within 24 hours and never share your info.
How we work
You Found Us. We Didn't Chase You.
Our whole sales process is no-pressure by design: you get a written offer with the math attached, it stays open while you think, and there's no obligation at any point. One follow-up call, then we leave you alone.
We also don't do outbound marketing — none of it. No bandit signs stapled to utility poles, no cold calls interrupting your dinner, no stream of letters filling your mailbox asking to buy your house. If you've been getting those, they aren't from us. We put our effort into being easy to find in search results, plus a few Google ads, so we're here at the moment you decide it's time — and invisible until then.