What is a Zillow cash offer and why am I seeing it everywhere?

Zillow Cash Offer

Now, Zillow actually has a program where they will buy your house for cash in just a couple of days. They were doing it for a few years and then they had to stop about two years ago because it was going to bankrupt the company, but they've started it again. Who knows why? Well, I'll tell you why. Here's the reason.

The reason behind Zillow cash offer

What Zillow wants to do is essentially lowball you and give you a cash offer so they can then resell your home later and make a profit. It's not a terrible business plan. It just means that you are going to lose out on what you could have had you sold it yourself in most cases. The good thing about maybe taking a Zillow cash offer, it's cash and you don't have to deal with it.

Pro of Zillow cash offer

Zillow is also trying to cut out the middleman of your nice real estate broker so they don't have to pay them, and that's understandable. Sometimes you don't feel like you want to actually go through the rigmarole of actually marketing it and have people through and just dealing with buyers and all the headaches that come with that. No problem. You can actually sell your house for cash.

Con of Zillow cash offer

The con is that it's a lot less than what you would actually make had you just put it on the market the traditional way and sold it in a really, really bad seller's market. Yeah, sure. Maybe you can understand that Zillow is going to pay you something that you might not otherwise get, or just have to have your house on the market forever and ever and ever, and it's just not worth the headache.

But in a competitive or just generally normal, neutral market, it may not make the most sense for you to take a cash offer just because it's easy, because you're going to get a lot less, and then you're going to see Zillow flip your house essentially, I don't know, in a couple months, a year, and see what they make off of it, and you're going to go, if only I just sold it myself.

So that's what a cash offer is. If you're thinking about making a move and you want to know more, just message us. Thanks.