Sell Your House As-Is in Chicago, Problems and All

The worry we hear most often is some version of the same sentence: the house is in no shape to sell. Maybe the foundation has settled, maybe the basement flooded, maybe it has sat empty and gone downhill, or maybe it is just full of a lifetime of belongings and dated in every room. Whatever the condition, selling as-is means you do not have to fix any of it. You hand over the house the way it stands today.

We are Sell Home Chicago, a local cash home buyer, and buying houses as-is is most of what we do. We buy across Chicago and the nearby suburbs, in any condition, and we pay cash. You make no repairs, you clean nothing, you hold no showings, and you leave behind whatever you do not want to take. This page explains what as-is really means, the kinds of problems that are fine with us, and why a cash buyer can take a house that a normal buyer cannot.

None of this is a trick. The condition of the house is simply built into the number we offer, which we explain to you in the open. A house that needs work is not a house we turn away, it is a house we price for the work it needs.

What selling as-is really means

Selling as-is means you sell the house in its present condition and give no promise to repair anything or to bring it up to any standard. The buyer takes it as it is, with its problems known and accounted for. With us, that is not a loophole, it is the whole offer. We look at the house, factor in what it needs, and pay you a cash number for it the way it sits.

In plain terms, here is what selling as-is to us means you do not have to do:

• No repairs, from a cracked foundation down to a dripping faucet, you fix none of it
• No cleaning or hauling, leave furniture, junk and belongings behind if you want
• No showings or open houses, nobody is parading through your home
• No staging, painting or updating to make the house show well
• No inspection to pass and no repair list from a buyer’s lender to satisfy

You walk away with the things you want and leave the rest. We deal with the clean-out, the repairs and everything else after closing. That is part of what you are handing off when you sell as-is to a cash buyer, and for many sellers it is the biggest relief of all.

The kinds of problems that do not scare us off

There is very little we have not seen in a Chicago house, and the problems that stop a normal sale do not stop ours. Houses we buy often have one or several of these, and a cash sale handles all of them:

• Foundation settling, cracked basement walls and a basement that takes on water after heavy storms
• Roof damage, an old roof, or storm, hail and ice damage
• Old knob-and-tube wiring, galvanized or lead water lines, and failing boilers or radiators
• Fire and smoke damage
• Burst pipes, water stains, and a musty house that has sat empty through a winter
• Mold, and dated kitchens and bathrooms that would need a full update to sell retail
• Clutter, hoarding, or a house still full of a family’s belongings

If your house has a problem that is not on this list, it almost certainly still does not stop a sale. The bigger the repair, the more it matters that you are selling to someone who buys as-is, and our sell a house that needs major repairs page goes further on the serious cases like foundation, water and fire damage.

Why a damaged house is hard to sell the normal way

Here is the part many sellers do not realize until they are deep in a listing. Most buyers on the open market are using a mortgage, and a mortgage lender does not just lend on the buyer, it lends on the house. The lender orders an appraisal and often an inspection, and if the house has real problems, a settling foundation, a bad roof, a wet basement or old systems, the lender can refuse to fund the loan until the work is done. On an as-is house, the seller will not do the work and the buyer often cannot, so the deal dies.

That is why damaged and dated houses sit, lose buyers, and sell for less than the listing suggested, if they sell at all. A cash buyer changes the math completely. We use no lender, so there is no appraisal to come in low and no inspector’s list to satisfy before closing. We take on the condition ourselves. If you want the full picture of who we are and everything we buy, we buy houses lays it out.

How the condition fits into the offer

An as-is sale does not mean we ignore the condition, it means the condition is priced in instead of being a reason to walk away. We start from what the house would be worth in good, updated condition, based on what similar homes near you in Chicago have recently sold for, and then we subtract what it would take to get the house there, along with our costs to buy and resell. What is left is a fair cash number for the house as it stands right now.

We show you that reasoning so the figure makes sense rather than feeling arbitrary. A cash offer on an as-is house is below full retail, and we say so plainly, but it comes with no repairs, no fees, no commissions and no showings, and we cover the normal closing costs. Our sell my house for cash page breaks down how we build the offer and how you get paid.

Chicago houses carry Chicago problems

A lot of the condition issues we buy come with the age of the housing here, which is one reason a local buyer matters. Chicago has some of the oldest housing stock in the country, with block after block of bungalows, two-flats and greystones built roughly a century ago. Those homes are well built, but they commonly carry old knob-and-tube wiring, galvanized or lead water service lines, aging boilers and radiators and clay sewer pipes, exactly the sort of thing that frightens retail buyers and the lenders behind them.

The climate adds its own wear. Hard Chicago winters mean freeze-thaw cycles that crack foundations and driveways, pipes that freeze and burst, ice dams that damage roofs, and heavy storms that back up and flood basements. A house with any of that can be hard to list even when it is otherwise sound. None of it stops us. We know what these problems are, what they cost to put right, and how to price them fairly, because we buy here and not from a screen in another state. If more than one thing is going on at once, our situations page lays out the different reasons people sell to us and points you to the right one.

Asking costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Tell us about the house, problems and all, and we will come back with a straight cash number and an explanation of how we reached it. If you would rather talk it through first, call and we will answer your questions before anything else.

Questions people ask