Great question. We’re not agents, and we don’t list houses. We are professional home buyers: We buy Louisiana houses that meet our purchasing criteria. From there we may repair the house and resell it to another homeowner or keep it as a rental ourselves.

Many of the houses we purchase are below market value (we do this so we can resell it at a profit to another homeowner). We are looking to get a fair discount on a property. However, in our experience, many sellers aren’t necessarily expecting a large “windfall” on the property but rather appreciate that we can offer cash, we close very quickly (no waiting for financing), and no time or effort or expense is required on your part of fix up the property or pay agent fees. If that’s what you’re looking for and you see the value in getting your house sold fast, let’s see if we can come to a fair win-win price. Besides, our no-obligation pricing commitment means that you do not have to move forward with the offer we give, but it’s good to know what we’re offering!

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Great question, and we happy to tell you or formula: Our process is very straightforward. We look at the location of the property, what repairs are needed, the current condition of the property, and values of comparable houses sold in the area recently. We take into consideration the fluctuating market of the past ten years, what is going on in the surrounding area, as well. We take many pieces of information into consideration and come up with a fair price that works for us and works for you too.

Another great question about bank jargon and what the phrase, “cash for your house” means.

Let us first explain a bit about upside down and how it relates to a short sale. A Short Sale occurs if someone is upside down on their house. Upside down is when there is more owed on the house than it is currently worth. Short sale, where the bank agrees to accept less than the payoff/amount owed if the home value dropped since they last purchased or refinanced. Let’s say the current market value is $100,000 and they owe $120,000 on their mortgage. Perhaps the house was worth $130,000 when they purchased it a year ago or whenever before, but either the market dropped or they incurred uninsured property damaged, which they can’t afford to repair.  Now they owe $120,000 and the house is worth $100,000, so they can either come up with the 20K difference to sell their home at a market value of $100,000 or walk away and let the bank foreclose. This would really hurt their credit in the future and make it difficult to buy another home.

This situation happens more than you would think.  The bank would rather allow a borrower to sell “short of payoff” and give up the $20,000 upfront rather than take title through foreclosure in which case they’d lose that 20K plus incur way more expenses such as foreclosure attorney fees, sheriff’s sale fees, eviction costs, repair fees, realtor commission fees, carrying costs such as paying utilities, cutting grass, etc. and net far less down the road by selling as a distressed property.

It’s usually a win-win for the current owner/loan borrower and lender. However, homeowners usually bury their head in the sand don’t work with their lender, most often losing the house through foreclosure when is far worse on their credit and financial situation. This happens because they don’t know how to navigate through the process. Simply, it’s scary and not very pleasant. We completely understand this.

If you allow Audubon to purchase the property, which would be much quicker, and we have the experience and expertise to work with their lender to get the short sale approved, this situation could be wiped away. The alternative is foreclosure where they would not see any cash and would have a judgment against them and much worse credit impact.

To summarize, the short answer is we can’t always hand you a check for a house in this situation, but we can get you out from under it with minimal or no effect on your credit.

This is what makes us stand out from the traditional method of selling your house: There are NO fees or commissions when you sell your house to us. We’ll make you an offer, and if it’s a fit then we’ll buy your house (and we’ll often pay for the closing costs too!). No hassle. No fees. We make our money after we pay for repairs on the house (if any) and sell it for a profit (we’re taking the risks here on whether we can sell it for a profit or not, once we buy the house from you… the responsibility is ours and you walk away without the burden of the property and its payments… and often with cash in your hand).

Real estate agents list properties and hope that someone will buy them. The agent shows the properties to prospective buyers if there are any (the average time to sell a property in many markets right now is 6-12 months) and then take a percentage of the sale price if they find a buyer. Oftentimes, the agent’s commission is 3-6% of the sale price of your house (so if it’s a $100,000 house, you’ll pay between $3,000 – $6,000 in commissions to an agent). Agents provide a great service for those that can wait 6-12 months to sell and who don’t mind giving up some of that sale price to pay for the commissions. But that’s where we’re different: We’re not agents, we’re home buyers. Our company actually buys houses. We don’t list houses. Since we’re actually the one buying the house from you, and we pay with all cash… we can make a decision to buy your house within a couple of days (sometimes the same day). Again, we make our living by taking the risk to buy the house with our own cash, repair the house, and market it ourselves to find a buyer (which is the hard part in this market).

There is absolutely zero obligation for you. Once you tell us a bit about your property, we’ll take a look at things, maybe set up a call with you to find out a bit more, and make you an all-cash offer that’s fair for you and fair for us. From there, it’s 100% your decision on whether or not you’d like to sell your house to us… and we won’t hassle you, won’t harass you… it’s 100% your decision and we’ll let you decide what’s right for you.