Before You Accept a Cash Offer

Retrading is when a buyer lowers the price after inspection, close to the closing date, on findings that were visible from the driveway. It works because by then you have told your family a date, you may have signed on the next place, and going back to market means starting over with a house that now looks like it fell out of contract. Nothing about a cash offer prevents this on its own.

Ask for a recent bank statement or a letter from the institution holding the money, dated, showing enough to close. A screenshot of a balance with no name on it is not proof of funds. A “verified buyer” badge on a website is not proof of funds.

This protects you from the buyer who intends to assign your contract to someone else and does not have the money themselves. Assignment is legal and common, and it is not automatically bad, but you should know it is happening before you take the house off market, not after their assignee walks.

Ask that the earnest money go hard after inspection: refundable during a short, defined inspection window, and non-refundable after it. The amount matters more than the label. A $500 deposit on a $300,000 house is a rounding error and buys you nothing.

This is the single term that most reduces retrading. A buyer who loses real money by walking will do their diligence up front instead of using the inspection period as a negotiation tool.

Get a specific date in the contract, not “on or about” with open-ended extensions. If extensions are allowed, cap them: how many, how long, and what the buyer pays you for each one. Cash closings usually run about two weeks, mostly determined by title work and anything the search turns up.

Also confirm in writing that the offer is as-is, who pays which closing costs, and that there is no financing contingency. If a “cash” offer contains a financing contingency, it is not a cash offer.

Have a real estate attorney or your agent read the contract before you sign. CloseCenter is a referral service and does not provide legal advice. In some states an attorney is part of the closing anyway.