Are you a Northern Kentucky homeowner who’s thinking about selling your house for cash? Well, this is one that we bought as investors for cash. We turn it around. We’re actually heading to closing today, but let’s walk through this house here in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, and what you need to know if you have plans of selling your house for cash vs listing on the market with a realtor.
My name is Eric Sztanyo from We Buy NKY houses. I’m also a realtor at Keller Williams realty and team Sztanyo.com. So I’m both a Northern Kentucky cash buyer investor, as well as a realtor with Keller Williams. And this was a house that a seller reached out to us.
Reasons Why You Would Prefer Selling Your House For Cash Vs Listing on The Market with a Realtor
We’re in the Beachwood school district here in Fort Mitchell. And we came out and talked through the options with them and said “Hey, what do you guys wanna do? Here’s what the cash offer would look like. Here’s what we could do if we put it on the market” And it needed some love. It needed a little bit of work and we’ll show you what that looked like on some of the things we did in this house. But today we finished up our rehab on the property. We put it on the market. As you guys can imagine in this market today, it went very fast.
There were multiple offers. Especially for the Beachwood school district, which obviously a lot of people try to get in. And we’re on a really cute street, Pleasant Ridge avenue in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. So let’s go check out and see what were some of the changes we did on this house. And then we’ll talk about your options. If you’re a seller, if you’re thinking of selling your house for cash, or if you’re thinking of putting it on the market, the advantage of working with us at We Buy NKY houses and team Sztanyo, is we can give you both options and we’ll walk you through that.
Now you might be thinking to yourself, why would anyone prefer selling your house for cash to a cash buyer, especially in this market and especially maybe in Beachwood schools here in Fort Mitchell? Well, there’s a number of reasons why this is the reason why it might be helpful to work with a cash buyer, who’s also a real estate agent or realtor so that we can present to you multiple options.
And the way I usually like to explain it to people is there’s kind of three factors you’re considering: there is money, which is important when you’re selling your house. There is speed and there is hassle.
When you’re thinking about selling your house for cash, it’s the fastest by far, it’s the easiest, cuz you don’t have to do a thing. And so if you have a house like this one that needed quite a bit of updates, you can sell it without having to lift a finger, which is nice. On the downside for you the seller, it’s gonna be the least amount of money, right? Because not only do we need to factor in the repairs to make the house look great, like it does right now. But we also need to factor in profit and some of our fixed costs as well. So like when I’m going to sell it today, I’m closing on it. I have to pay the buyer’s agent. I’m the agent. And so I don’t have to pay for myself on the listing side. But on the buyer side, I’ve got to pay 3% to that agent. So that’s a cost to me when I go to sell it. So whether you are working with an agent and paying that 6%, which is generally pretty typical in the Cincinnati area or not, I need to pay for that if as the investor on the flip side, when I go to resell it.
So speed, hassle and money. Now, if you were to fix it up yourself, the way I explain it. So let’s say selling your house for cash option is “option A”. If you were to fix it up and sell it yourself, I call that “option C”. That’s gonna be the longest amount of time, the most amount of hassle for you, but you also make the most amount of money. So even after you pay the real estate agent commission of 6%, what you don’t have to factor in is that investor profit, because you’re selling it to an owner occupant and not another investor.
And that’s probably how, I don’t know, 80% to 90% of the homes get sold is people think they got to do all this work and fix it up and try to get the most money. And if your goal is to get the most money, then yeah, I would say, call a real estate agent, call myself or somebody else and let them come in and give you tips on, you know, design and what you should do in terms of updates on the house to get the most money. So that maybe is “option C”, which is fixing it up and putting it on the market. It’s gonna take the longest, it’s gonna take the most work, but you’ll probably net out the most money in the end.
And then there’s “option B”, which is somewhere in the middle, which is, you could put it on the market and still sell it to an owner occupant instead of an investor. But you’re selling it more as is, or you’re doing just a little bit of clean up and maybe some minor repairs. So that’s gonna be kind of the medium amount of time, the medium amount of hassle and probably the medium amount of money. Even if you go that route, you’re probably gonna make more depends on the house and the neighborhood and all that Than selling your house for cash to an investor, so you’ll make more money and it’s kind of the middle road. And so when I come and talk to sellers, I give them the options of, do you want it fast? like, what do you want? What’s your motivation? What matters to you the most out of speed, hassle and money? Which one matters to you the most. And then I give you different options and you can choose what’s best for you.
This house turned out really well. My dad who works with me on some of these projects, he managed the entire flip and you guys tea from probably some of the before and after photos. We did a lot to this house. We put in a brand new kitchen. That was a bit of a mess. So we kind of opened that up, did a whole new redesign, new cabinets, new granite countertops, brand new stainless steel appliances, really beautiful. We did lighting throughout. We refinished the hardwood floors, all throughout the house. And this was the challenge up here was this bathroom at the top of the stairs. It was really tight. There was not a lot of space. There was like mold because there was no vent before. So we cleaned all that out, remediated, everything, did a whole new design. There was a bit of a closet here. So we kind of knocked that out and we were able to put this in here. So you actually have some room to breathe, to move around. Brand new tile, brand new shower, brand new everything. It turned out really well. You guys can check it out from the before and after pictures, what it looked like before.
So the reality is, motivation. Is it for the seller? And you might be thinking to yourself, well, why wouldn’t you want to get the most amount of money? Well, there are different life circumstances for everybody and every different seller. So in this scenario I came out and I said “Hey, if you put it on the market as is even with this work, I think this is what you could sell it for. This is what you would net. But here’s my cash offer. And here’s the work that that I need to do to put into it.” And the sellers weighed that. And they’re like, you know, we just wanna be done. We don’t want to deal with it. That offer is good with us cuz they lived in this house for several years.
Like many people in Fort Mitchell. They put their children through the great school system and now they didn’t need that school system anymore. So they’re like, Hey, we don’t wanna pay the high property taxes in Beachwood anymore. We don’t wanna maintain and manage a house and put into money that goes into that. We’ve got equity built up because we’ve lived in it over the years and we’ve had all this appreciation and you’re telling me you’re gonna give me that number and you can close in two weeks. Great. Let’s do it.
This is the way we do deals at We Buy NKY houses, we want everyone to know the numbers. We don’t want them to be hood weight in any way. And again, I’m a licensed real estate agent. And so when I come out, I’m showing you here’s the cash offer and here’s why. Here are my estimated cost of repairs. Here’s the profit I wanna make. So you guys see all the numbers right there when I come out and give an offer. And then I also do a net sheet on here’s what I think if you were to list the property as is, what I think you would make or here’s what I think you could make if you fix it all up yourself. And again, just goes back to what do you guys want to do? What’s best for you. And then we work it out from there.
I’m heading off to closing. I need to go sign some papers and turn this one over to the new owner. Who’s gonna get a great house. I mean, this is such a cute little tutor in Beachwood schools. I mean my dad, I’m really proud of. He’s so good at managing these jobs. The finished product turned out really, really, really nice. I hope you guys can see that and see it in the work here. So that that’s one other nice component is if you sell it to a local cash buyer versus someone who’s national, we take a lot of pride in these houses because we live here. This is our community. This is where we grew up. This is where I’ve got five kids. And so this is where we’re raising our kids. So we care a lot. It’s always fun to take a home that needs a little bit of love like this one did and spruce it up and go ahead and sell it to the next homeowner. Who’s gonna enjoy it for years.
We Buy NKY Houses Is your Trusted Guide in Selling Your House for Cash
I hope it was helpful if you’re thinking of selling your house, whether you’re thinking about selling to an investor or you’re looking to put it on a market that you would consider us at We Buy NKY Houses or on the listing side that you would consider us at team Sztanyo. Again, I’m gonna show you numbers either way. So if you have any questions, put them in the comments below, you can email me directly at eric.sztanyo@kw.com. Thanks and have a great day.