You may want to sell your house fast for money to easy and instant cash home buyers for several different and personal individual reasons. It may be relocation due to employment demands, a way for you to consolidate debt, a change in civil status, or wanting to rid yourself of the responsibilities for an inherited residential property.
However, this urgency to sell your old home can also be taken advantage of by scammers who wish for easy profits via illegal and criminal methods. You will not want to give these opportunists any chances of living off of money obtained at your expense.
You will never want to find yourself homeless and indebted for having believed sham investors presenting themselves as serious home buyers in cash, and with no way to chase after them in the end.
Here are the two most common methods of we buy houses scams which you will want to avoid and never fall victim to.
We Buy Houses Scams #1: The Contract “Bait and Switch” Scheme
In the contract bait and switch scheme, the pretend home buyer will earn your trust and anchor on this gained trust in which the scammer masquerades as a qualified investor and will base the plot on making a deal with you through presenting you with a contract.
Since you believe you have created a bond between the two of you built on mutual trust, you find yourself signing a contract with a stranger without thoroughly checking out the document you are signing.
Prior to this, what happens is a purported home buyer will ask to schedule a visit to check out the house which you are trying to sell fast for cash. The con artist will act interested in buying your property and convince you he will indeed make the purchase so you will not have to list it and offer it to someone else.
The two of you will then enter into a verbal agreement with regards to the impending purchase. The pretend home buyer will return with a contract in hand which will be the formal and legal version of what you previously agreed upon.
Being trustful of the supposed buyer, plus the idea of the fast house sale for fast cash is too appealing to resist, you sign the said contract without even taking the time to review it.
What happens next is yet another contract signing which will be presented to and asked of you by the same person. The scammer will claim the new contract which you will need to sign just has a few very minor changes on it. As with the previous scenario, you just sign without reading the supposed formal and legal agreement between you.
Thereafter, most likely during the closing, you will find out you just lost your home due to the second contract you signed, which had little to do with the initial verbal agreement. There lies the contract bait and switch scheme.
Perhaps you will invest efforts to get back what you owned, and so you find yourself in a legal dispute fighting for the residential property which you unknowingly signed away.
We Buy Houses Scams #2: The Liberian “For Sale by Owner” (FSBO) Scam
In the Liberian FSBO scam, you will be contacted by a person from outside the country who allegedly saw your house for sale advertisement on the internet. The person will tell you about the scammer’s impending migration to the United States and the intentions of paying for your house in full cash.
Armed with a convincing story, the con artist will get you to wire him or her money to wherever the location may be. The scammer will tell you the money will be some kind of bond between you. There is also the scammer’s way to appeal to emotions in which you will end up wanting to help in the planned migration to the U.S.
It may also be that you will be too trusting, by handing your bank account details to the person and before you know it, the person has already emptied your account. This particular scam is quite active right now.
Avoid these we buy houses scams. Protect yourself from fake home buyers who are after getting money from you through shady methods and choose to work only with a buyer after you have done your research on the person and have enough proof the buyer is a legitimate investor. We are a trusted company and we buy houses in Albuquerque for cash. We will provide you with information about every step and a contract.
An internet search will reveal a plethora of results detailing the current scams in play. And remember, any deal which sounds too good to be true, usually is.
Derrick Rosenbarger is a real estate investor and owner of ABQ Property Buyers, LLC since 2016. His background includes over 16 years as an Instructor Pilot in the United States Air Force, which honed his leadership skills. Today, he is dedicated to growing his real estate portfolio and helping others in the property market. Derrick's commitment to excellence makes him a reliable expert in real estate investment.