How HomeLight Cash Offer Helped These Sacramento Buyers Win Their First Home With Their First Offer

When Spencer Smitherman and his wife, Holly, had their first child, it didn’t take long for the couple to realize they would need more space than their one-bedroom apartment in Orange County could offer.

Since the Smithermans wanted to live near friends in Sacramento and they knew a four-bedroom home would better accommodate both their family and their work-from-home lifestyle, they decided it was time to think about relocation.

Of course, this is often easier in theory than in practice.

“It’s expensive to fly up to Sacramento every time we wanted to look at homes, so I was scoping things out online,” says Smitherman, recalling the initial challenges of house-hunting. “We were also kind of wavering between wanting something that was a bit more of a fixer-upper, or already renovated.”

Between the distance and their uncertainty over which type of home to pursue, the Smithermans needed help — especially if they wanted to compete in Sacramento’s hot market.

The first offer is a winner with HomeLight Cash Offer

Fortunately, they were working with Kim Carlsen, an expert real estate agent who was ready to introduce HomeLight Cash Offer.

HomeLight Cash Offer turns any qualified buyer into an all-cash buyer. By eliminating the financing contingency and allowing for a fast close, buyers and their agents can write an ultra-competitive offer that sellers find irresistible.

Now with the power of cash on their side, the Smithermans decided to focus on finding a renovated home with a minimum of 2,000 square feet.

“Since we both work from home and the baby is here with the nanny, it’s just not very conducive to working in a construction site,” says Smitherman.

Feeling confident in their ability to buy, when the Smithermans found the perfect four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath, comfortably updated Sacramento home, they were ready to make an offer.

But they weren’t alone with their interest in the property. The Smithermans were up against more than a dozen other offers on the home.

“I want to say there were 15 to 20 offers,” Smitherman says. “The seller selected the top three — ours and two others — and ultimately kicked it back to everyone asking that we rebid at a higher price. I think we ended up winning by $1,200.”

Smitherman credits the HomeLight Cash Offer program for their successful bid.

“The beauty of the all-cash offer is that we ended up getting the very first home we put an offer on, and we actually won,” he says. “I don’t think that happens for everybody, and I think the cash offer was critical to us getting the offer accepted.”

A fast close sweetens a strong cash offer

For sellers, not having to wait for (and worry about) their intended buyer having to secure financing is a huge advantage.

And a fast close makes a great deal even better.

“The sellers gave us the specifications of what they cared about the most, and they said all-cash offers are attractive, and fast closing dates are attractive,” Smitherman explains.

As it turned out, the Smithermans’ original offer to close in just seven days was too fast for the sellers.

“They still needed to move all their stuff out, so I think we had a 10- or 15-day close,” recalls Smitherman. [Ed. note: He’s right! It was an 11-day close.]

The Smitherman family is now happily settled into their new home, with plenty of space for work, play, and daily life. And the couple is still grateful for their experience with HomeLight Cash Offer in making it all possible.

“The financing offers are really great, but it’s the communication and partnership components that tie everything together,” says Smitherman. “This is our first home together, so I don’t have many points of reference, but I just hear horror stories of people wanting to put an offer on a home and all of a sudden the mortgage brokers are just MIA, you can’t get ahold of them, it’s like, ‘Hey, we’re trying to get this done and you’re not around, do you actually want to have our business?’

“HomeLight partnered with our agent and just made the experience fantastic. The communication loop is really short, there’s not a lot of lag time between sending emails and texts and so forth. Overall, amazing turnaround time.”

Header Image Source: (Craig Pattenaude / Unsplash)