Lead brokers, contract flippers and buyers
Lead brokers sell your information. You fill in an address, no offer materializes, and within a day six companies are calling. Nothing was ever going to be bought.
Contract flippers sign a contract with you and then market that contract to actual buyers at a higher price. The gap is their fee. The practice is legal and disclosed properly it is fine, but it introduces a party you never met and a renegotiation risk if they cannot find anyone.
Actual buyers close with their own money. Fewer of the messages reaching Bay Shore homeowners come from this third group than most people assume, which is the whole reason this question gets asked.
How to test any offer in five minutes
Can you show proof of funds? A real buyer has a bank statement or a letter and will send it without fuss. Reluctance here is the single most informative reaction you will get.
Will you be the one closing, or might you assign the contract? Ask it directly and get the answer in plain words. There is a defensible answer either way; there is no defensible answer for being vague about it.
Is the number binding, or can it change after an inspection? Many offers are deliberately high to secure the contract and then reduced once you are committed and other buyers have moved on.
Can I use my own attorney? In New York you will use one anyway. Anybody steering you toward a specific attorney, or suggesting you do not need one, has told you something important.
Signs to stop and slow down
A firm figure before anyone has seen the house. Bay Shore houses cannot be priced from tax records and a satellite image, so a number delivered that way is an opening line, not an offer.
A deadline built to rush you. Genuine offers do not expire overnight, and a time limit that exists to stop you checking elsewhere tells you what the offer is worth.
Any request for money from you. A buyer has no legitimate reason to charge a seller a fee, a deposit or an application cost.
And any suggestion that you can do without your own attorney.
The process, so you know when it is off-script
Viewing, written offer, attorney review, signed contract, deposit in escrow, title search, closing. In Suffolk County that is the entire process, and it is meant to be simple.
Knowing it is useful because anything outside it stands out. Skipping the attorney, a deposit held by the buyer, or a new price after signing are all departures from a process that exists to protect you as the seller.
Applying the same test to us
We will send proof of funds when you ask, and you should ask. Our written figure is the figure at closing; we price the condition before we make the offer, so an inspection does not change it. You use your own attorney, and if you need one we will suggest names rather than provide one.
On assignment: we buy houses, renovate them and sell them on. Ask us whether we will be the one closing on your house and you will get a straight answer for your specific property rather than a slogan.
We buy in Nassau and Suffolk only, and when listing your Bay Shore house would serve you better, we say so. That happens more often than you might expect.
What you do not pay
Listing a house the usual way brings each of these costs with it. Selling to us brings none of them.
- Agent commission
- $32,500 at 5% of the Bay Shore median none
- Seller closing costs
- About $13,000 on a $650,000 sale. We can cover these. none
- Repairs to make it listable
- Whatever the house needs, paid up front none
- Cleanout and removal
- Per truckload, before anyone views it none
- Carrying costs while it waits
- Taxes, insurance and utilities while you spend 77 to 92 days finding a buyer and waiting for their loan none
What happens to your details when you fill in a form
On a lead broker's site, it is sold. Often to several buyers at once, which is why a single form submission can produce calls from six companies within a day. Some of those sites are built to look exactly like a buyer's site and never make an offer at all.
Before you enter an address anywhere, it is worth reading what the privacy policy says about sharing, and noting whether there is one. A company that will not tell you what it does with your details has answered the question. This applies to us as much as to anyone, and ours says we do not sell your information.
What it means when a contract gets sold on
The contract you sign contains a clause saying whether it can be transferred. If it can, the buyer can find somebody else to step into their place and take a fee for arranging it.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this and a lot of houses trade that way. The risk you carry is completion risk: your sale now depends on a third party being found, and if none is, you have lost the time. A buyer closing with their own funds carries no such dependency. Whichever you are dealing with, you are entitled to know which it is before you sign, and your attorney will tell you what the clause actually says.
If you have already signed something
Take it to an attorney today rather than trying to work it out yourself, and take the whole document including anything you signed at the door.
What matters is what the contract says: whether there is a period in which you can withdraw, what the deposit arrangements are, whether it is assignable, and what happens if either side does not complete. Those are specific questions with specific answers, and an hour with an attorney is worth considerably more than any reassurance from the other party.
Do not rely on a verbal assurance that you can get out of it. If it is not in the document, it does not exist.
Common questions
Are all the companies texting me about my house scams?
Most are not scams in a criminal sense. They are lead brokers and contract flippers operating legally, and the problem is usually that nobody explains which one you are dealing with. Ask directly and the picture clears up fast.
Should a cash buyer ever ask me for money?
No. Never, for any reason. There is no legitimate fee, deposit or application payment that a buyer collects from a seller.
They offered more than everyone else. Is that good?
Treat a conspicuously high offer with more care, not less. A number well above the others is sometimes real and is often a way to secure the contract and take other buyers out of the picture, after which it is reduced. Ask whether the figure is binding and whether it can change after an inspection, and get the answer in writing.
Do I really need my own attorney?
In New York, yes, and use your own rather than one suggested by the buyer. It is the single most effective protection available to you, and it is standard practice on both sides of every residential sale in the state.