A cash offer looks like a number somebody made up in a truck. It isn’t. It’s four subtractions, and you can run them yourself once you know what they are.

I’ve walked more than a thousand houses in Hillsborough and Pinellas since 2015. The math below is the same math every time, whether the house is a block ranch in Seminole Heights or a 1980s split in Largo.

Where does the starting number come from?

Not what your house is worth today. What it sells for finished — new roof if it needs one, new kitchen, new floors, permits closed, sitting on the open market with a retail buyer getting a loan on it.

That number comes from houses on your street that have already been through it. Same size, same era, same flood zone, sold in the last few months in renovated condition. That’s the top of the page. Everything else comes off of it.

This is the part most sellers are surprised by, and it cuts both ways. Sometimes it’s higher than the owner expected. The subtractions are what people actually argue about.

Subtraction one: the cost to sell it

Closing costs, commissions, and seller concessions. In this market concessions are close to unavoidable — buyers are asking and getting them.

Here’s the part that gets missed: those are the same costs you would pay if you listed the house yourself. They don’t disappear because you sold to me. They come out of my side of the deal instead of yours. When you’re comparing a cash offer to a listing price, that’s one of the gaps that isn’t really a gap.

Subtraction two: the repairs

This is the number I’m actually pricing when I walk your house, and it’s the one that moves the offer the most.

I look at the roof, the electrical panel, the air handler and condenser, the kitchen, the baths, the floors, and whatever’s behind the drywall that nobody’s looked at in fifteen years. In Florida the roof and the age of the AC usually do more to the number than the kitchen does.

I don’t price any of it off a per-square-foot guess. I stand in the room and add it up. That’s why I come out and look instead of texting you a price off your address — and it’s worth saying plainly that anybody who gives you a number without seeing the house hasn’t given you a real number yet. They’ve given you a conversation starter they can walk back later.

Subtraction three: holding costs

I own the house while the work happens. Taxes, insurance, utilities, lawn — every month, until it sells again.

Insurance on a vacant house in Florida is its own line item, and it is not cheap. Neither is a renovation that runs two months longer than planned because a permit sat. Those months are real money and they come off the top before the offer gets to you.

Subtraction four: my return

Yes, I make money when I buy your house. That’s the business. Anybody in this business telling you otherwise is lying to you, and you should wonder what else they’re willing to say.

What you’re owed isn’t a seller who pretends there’s no margin. It’s one who tells you the margin is in there, tells you roughly why, and doesn’t get cute about it.

So what’s left?

What’s left after those four is your offer. No formula hiding behind it, no proprietary system, no algorithm. Finished value, minus the cost to sell it, minus the repairs, minus the cost to hold it, minus my return.

And yes — that’s a real gap from the finished number. Which brings up the part most of these pages leave out.

When you shouldn’t sell to me

If your house is in decent shape, a buyer could get a loan on it, and nothing is forcing your timeline — list it. You’ll almost certainly net more. It isn’t close, and I’d rather say it here than waste your Saturday.

The houses where I’m actually the right answer are narrower than my own marketing would suggest:

The repair list eats most of that gap on its own, so there’s no retail buyer to lose in the first place.
The house can’t be financed as it sits — roof, open claim, permits, structure — and you don’t want to fix it to make it eligible.
Something real is driving the clock, and certainty is worth more to you than the last ten percent.
You don’t want to clean it out, show it, or deal with it at all.

If none of those is you, you probably already know it.

What should I ask any cash buyer?

The number matters less than these four. Ask me, ask the other ten people calling you, and compare the answers:

Can this offer change before closing, and under what circumstances? Some buyers re-trade after inspection as a matter of routine.
Who’s paying closing costs?
Are you actually buying it, or assigning my contract to somebody else? Both are legal. You should know which one you’re in.
Can you show me proof of funds?

A buyer who gets uncomfortable with any of those four has told you something useful.

What’s the first step?

Send me the address. I’ll come walk it, price the repairs in front of you, and tell you what your number looks like and how I got there.

If I think you’d do better listing it, I’ll tell you that too. I lose a few that way. I’d rather lose those than talk somebody into the wrong decision.

Mike Youngblood — A+ Home Buyers
Hillsborough and Pinellas County, Florida
813-200-7665
Licensed Florida real estate SL3213954 · TMWRK Brokerage LLC