How Simple Sale works
HomeLight is based in Scottsdale and has been matching sellers with agents since 2012. Simple Sale is its side product for people who do not want to list. HomeLight does not buy your house. An investor in its network does, through a local title company, usually in 10 to 30 days, and you pay no fee. HomeLight earns its money from agent referral fees on the listing side.
Expect follow-up. If your house could sell on the open market, you will hear from HomeLight about listing it.
Start with your house
The right alternative depends more on the property than on any company's pitch. Find your row.
| Your situation | Best first move | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Move-in ready, no deadline | List it | The open market usually pays 10 to 20 percent more than a cash offer on a clean house |
| Move-in ready, and you need to pick the closing date | Request Opendoor and Offerpad | Both buy clean homes and let you choose the date |
| Needs work, large metro | Sundae, or two or three local investors | Competing buyers price the same repairs differently |
| Needs work, small town | The local We Buy Ugly Houses franchise, plus any local investor you can find | Few buyers operate there, so every extra number counts |
| Inherited or vacant | Sundae where it operates, otherwise local investors | Both are set up for houses nobody is living in |
The 10 to 20 percent gap is typical for move-in-ready homes and shrinks on houses that need work.
What the listing pitch is worth in dollars
On a move-in-ready house, the gap between a cash offer and what the open market pays usually runs 10 to 20 percent of the sale price. On a $250,000 house that is $25,000 to $50,000. So HomeLight's suggestion to list is often the right advice for a clean house, even though it is also how HomeLight gets paid.
On a house that needs work the gap shrinks, because the repairs and the months of holding eat into what a listing would net. That is the house where a cash sale makes sense, and where a second and third cash number matter most.
What one offer cannot tell you
A single number is a price with no context. Here is the spread from my own deals. Across the 45 that had a full after-repair value on file, offers landed anywhere from under half of that value to more than 80 percent of it, and the median sat near 50 percent.
Where your HomeLight offer falls in that range depends mostly on how much work the house needs. Without a second offer, you cannot tell whether the investor priced your repairs fairly or padded them.
| Offer as a share of after-repair value | Deals |
|---|---|
| Under 50%, the heaviest rehabs | 22 |
| 50 to 60% | 6 |
| 60 to 70% | 7 |
| 70 to 80% | 4 |
| 80% or more, the lightest work | 6 |
From the 45 contracted or closed deals in my own pipeline with a recorded after-repair value. After-repair value means the resale price once every repair is done, so it runs higher than today's as-is value.
If you take the advice to list, shop the agent too
HomeLight will match you with one of its partner agents, and you are free to compare. Clever Real Estate, for one, matches sellers with agents who list for a 1.5 percent commission, against a standard 2.5 to 3 percent. On a $300,000 sale that is $4,500 on the listing side against $7,500 to $9,000.
Interview more than one agent the same way you would collect more than one cash offer. Ask each what they would list at, what they would do in the first two weeks, and what the last three houses they sold near you went for.
What to ask when HomeLight calls about listing
You will probably get that call, so use it. Ask the agent for three things in writing. The price they would list at. The recent sales they used to get there. And a net sheet, which is a one-page estimate of what you would walk away with after commission, closing costs, and any repairs they want done first.
Now you have something to set beside the cash offer. Put the net from the listing next to the net from the cash sale, then subtract what it costs you to carry the house for the extra weeks a listing takes. Whichever number is bigger after that is your answer, and it took one phone call to find out.
If you want more than one cash number
Sundae is the option built for this. A Sundae rep walks the house, then it sits on a private marketplace for a few days while investors bid, and most sellers see several offers within 3 to 5 days. Sellers pay nothing. Sundae only works in about 25 metros, so check your ZIP before you count on it.
Where Sundae does not reach, you can get the same effect by calling local investors yourself. Three calls is enough. Give each one the same facts about the house and the same deadline for a number, and you will see how far apart buyers land on one property.
Do it inside the same week you got the HomeLight offer. Cash offers are usually good for a limited time, and you want every number on the table at once so you are comparing prices from the same market on the same house.
If Simple Sale was the only offer you could get
In a small market, that single offer may be everything HomeLight's network has for your area. One more place to look is the local We Buy Ugly Houses franchise. HomeVestors has about 1,100 of them in 47 states, so there is often one nearby, and a franchisee will usually walk the house and give you a number at the meeting or within 24 hours.
When the Simple Sale offer is the one to take
Sometimes it is. If the house needs more work than a retail buyer's lender will accept, if you have to be out in under 30 days, or if your town simply has no other investor returning calls, a real offer that closes in 10 to 30 days with no fee is worth more than a better offer that never shows up.
Make one attempt at a second number first. If nobody else comes back within a few days, you can take the HomeLight offer knowing you checked.
Checking the investor behind the offer
The offer comes from an investor, so vet the investor. Get the company's legal name from the contract, confirm it is registered in your state, and look it up with the Better Business Bureau.
Ask whether they are closing themselves or assigning the contract to someone else, and get the answer in writing.