Guide · March 1, 2024 · 5 min read
We buy houses as-is in Salt Lake City. Here is what that means.
Every cash buyer says as-is. Here is the specific promise behind the phrase when we make it in Salt Lake City, and the one honest cost that comes with it.
"As-is" is the most-used phrase in cash home buying and the least defined. The search that brings most people to this page is some version of "sell my house as is Salt Lake City", and every result on it makes the same four-word promise. When you sell a house as-is to us, you are accepting a specific commitment with edges you can check, so here is the whole of it.
The promise, precisely
You sell the house in exactly the condition it is in on the day we walk through it, with no repairs expected from you. You do not fix anything, replace anything, clean anything, or empty anything. Whatever you do not want to take stays: furniture, appliances, the garage, the storage room nobody has sorted in decades. There is no inspection contingency in the contract, so the offer cannot be reopened after a walkthrough the way an iBuyer's can, and no lender is involved, so nobody's underwriter gets a vote on the condition.
One walkthrough happens before the offer is final. That is not a loophole; it is the reason the number can hold. Condition is priced once, up front, by a person standing in the house, instead of being renegotiated after you have already committed.
What as-is covers in Salt Lake City's older houses
Salt Lake City has the oldest housing stock in Utah, and the phrase has to cover more here than it does in a subdivision built in 2005. The Avenues, Capitol Hill and Liberty Wells carry bungalows and brick cottages past their hundredth birthday. Sugar House is mostly 1920s and 1930s. Rose Park, Glendale and Poplar Grove are post-war ramblers on their third or fourth owner. The list of things a buyer's inspector flags in those houses is long and familiar to us:
- Knob-and-tube or cloth-wrapped wiring, and a panel that predates the family
- Galvanized supply lines, a cast-iron stack, and a clay sewer lateral that the roots have found
- A basement apartment or a rear addition that nobody ever permitted
- Foundation movement on the east bench, and a basement on the west side that takes on water every spring
- A roof that has been patched more often than it has been replaced
Every one of those is a repair a retail buyer's lender will want done, or priced, before a loan closes. For us it is the walkthrough list. We note it, we price it, and it moves to our side of the closing table with the rest. If you want the city-level version of this page, with the neighbourhoods and the closing mechanics, it is here: we buy houses in Salt Lake City.
The conditions that phrase covers
In practice, as-is means we have bought, and keep buying, houses like these:
- Houses that need real repairs: roofs, furnaces, plumbing, electrical, foundation movement
- Fire, water, and termite damage, including houses a retail buyer's lender would refuse outright
- Hoarder houses and houses full of belongings, with no cleanout expected from you
- Vacant, abandoned, and rundown properties, including ones with open code violations
- Rental properties with tenants in place, paying or not; the tenancy transfers with the sale
- Inherited houses and estates mid-probate, where the paperwork is half the problem
- Houses with deed issues, liens, or title tangles that a title company has to clear
The pattern in that list is not "bad houses". It is houses where the fixing, clearing, or emptying would land on the seller before a normal sale could start. As-is moves all of that to our side of the closing table.
How the one walkthrough works
The walkthrough takes under an hour, and you do not prepare for it. One of us walks the house with you or with whoever holds the key: every room, the basement, the attic access if there is one, the roof from the ground, the yard and the outbuildings. We are looking at the same things an inspector would, but for a different reason. An inspector produces a list for a buyer to negotiate with. We produce a number that already includes the list.
Within 24 hours of that visit you have a written offer. It names the price, the closing date you asked for, and the fact that there are no fees or commissions coming out of it. It does not name repairs, because there are none, and it does not carry an inspection clause, because the inspection already happened. The cash offer page sets out the arithmetic behind the number line by line, so you can see how the condition was priced rather than take our word for it.
If you accept, the contract goes to a local title company. They run the title search, clear anything owed against the house out of the proceeds, and set the closing for the date on the offer: about seven days if the calendar is tight, up to sixty if you need room to move.
The situations behind the houses
Most people who call us are not house flippers testing the market. Something changed: a divorce, a job in another state, an inheritance, a landlord decade that has run its course, payments that stopped fitting after a job loss or a diagnosis, or a foreclosure date on the calendar. The house is the asset that can convert to cash fast enough to matter, and the situations pages, from foreclosure to inherited homes, walk through the specific mechanics of each.
The honest cost
An as-is cash offer is below full retail. It has to be: the repairs, the cleanout, the carrying costs, and the resale risk move to us, and they get priced. If your house is clean, sound, and you can give a listing three months, an agent will usually net you more, and we will tell you that on the phone. The comparison table puts the two routes side by side, including the row we lose.
What you get for the discount is certainty and speed: a written number in 24 hours that does not change, a closing in about seven days or on the date you choose, no fees or commissions subtracted, and a house you can hand over exactly as it stands. The same promise holds in every town on our Utah map, and the day-by-day timeline is on the sell my house fast page. If that trade is the right one for your situation, request your cash offer and start with the number.
Find out what your house is worth in cash. Free, and no strings.
One phone call, or one short form. You'll have a real number by this time tomorrow.
Tell us about the house
Where the house is, your name, and a number we can reach you on. We call back within one business day, and you're free to say no.