Did You Get a Cash Offer for Your Home?

Before You Sign

Cash Home Buyers Are Active Across Chicagoland

Companies that buy houses directly from homeowners are making offers throughout the Chicago area every day. Selling to one of them can be a perfectly reasonable choice: the sale is fast, the home sells as-is, and there is no listing process.

But the purchase agreement you are asked to sign was written by the buyer, for the buyer. Once you sign it, you are bound by every term it contains, including the ones you did not notice. A contract review before you sign is the cheapest protection you will ever buy in a real estate transaction.

Send Us the Offer You Received

Received an offer from a company not listed here? We review purchase agreements from any direct home buyer. Call (630) 299-7600 and we will read it with you.

What We Check Before You Sign

When you bring us a cash offer, we review the entire agreement and walk you through it in plain English. In particular, we look at:

The Offer Price Is Not What You Walk Away With

The number on the first page is the purchase price. Your net proceeds are what is left after everything the contract and the closing statement take out. Those are different numbers, and the gap between them is where sellers are most often surprised.

Before you decide whether an offer is worth taking, you should know how each of these lands in your specific transaction:

Watch the property tax language in particular. Illinois homeowner exemptions, including the general homestead and senior exemptions, reduce your tax bill. A proration clause written against the non-exempt amount can shift real money back to you at closing even when the marketing promised that the buyer covers all costs. It is not hidden. It is in the contract, and it is the kind of term a review catches.

You can estimate the seller side of a closing yourself with our closing cost calculator, then call us and we will check it against the actual agreement.

Assignment: Your Contract Can Be Sold to Somebody Else

When you sign a purchase agreement, you create something with value: the right to buy your house at the agreed price. An assignment clause lets the buyer sell that right to a third party, usually for a fee, and then step out of the deal. The person who actually shows up at closing may not be the company whose name is on the contract you signed.

Some agreements go further and grant the buyer the right to market the property before closing, including on the Multiple Listing Service. That can sit alongside marketing materials telling you the company does not list houses. Both can be true at once, because the contract controls, and the contract is the document that binds you.

None of that is automatically improper, and assignment is a normal part of real estate. REAL Law Group represents investors and wholesalers on the other side of these transactions every week, which is exactly why we know what the paperwork does. What matters is that you know before you sign whether your contract can be assigned, whether your house can be marketed, and what happens to your earnest money and your closing date if it is.

You May Only Get One Chance to Fix the Contract

Many standard Illinois residential contracts include an attorney review period, typically five business days, during which your attorney can propose changes or disapprove the deal. A cash buyer's own purchase agreement only contains the protections that are actually written into it. Do not assume a protection exists because it usually does.

The safest time to involve an attorney is before your signature goes on the page. If you have already signed, call us immediately: if your contract includes a review window, we may still be able to modify the terms, but that window closes fast.