Get a cash offer for a house with structural damage.
Foundation cracks, failing roof, bowed walls, termite damage. Enter the address and see a real cash number. We buy houses most buyers won't touch.
The bones are the problem. That's what we buy.
Structural damage means the load-bearing parts of the house — foundation, framing, roof system — need work. Sellers see four versions most often: settling foundations in older masonry homes, bowed basement walls from lateral soil pressure, roof failure from deferred maintenance, and termite or rot damage in the sill plate and joists.
Structural is the category where the retail market breaks down. A standard buyer with an FHA or conventional loan can't close on a house with known structural defects because the appraiser flags them. Lenders require the defect fixed before funding. You're left with either doing the repair yourself or selling to cash.
A good cash buyer has a structural engineer and a contractor who prices the fix before making an offer. That's what lets the offer be real, not a lowball.
Your stage sets your buyer pool and your offer range.
What a cash buyer actually pays here.
Structural offers price off post-repair ARV with a larger repair reserve than a standard cash sale. Foundation repair runs $8,000–$30,000 for typical work (piering, underpinning), more for full replacement. Framing repair runs $5,000–$40,000 depending on scope. Roof replacement on a typical 2,000 sq ft single-family runs $18,000–$35,000. The buyer adds all of it plus a 10–15% contingency for what the engineer missed.
Example: $310,000 post-repair ARV on a single-family in Phoenix, AZ, $45,000 in confirmed structural work (foundation piering plus sill-plate replacement), $10,000 in other work. The math lands at $310,000 × 0.68 = $210,800, minus $55,000 combined repairs and contingency, for a cash offer around $156,000.
The engineer's report is the bottleneck. We can get one done in 5–10 business days. Without it, the offer is a range; with it, the offer is a number.[1]
Cash vs. listing — here's how long each takes.
Allow 10–14 days for a structural engineer report before the final offer locks. Once scoped, we close in 21–30 days. If you already have a recent engineer report (under 12 months old), we use it and the timeline compresses.
With work before listing, photos, time on market, and inspection risk. On a tight timeline, a listing usually doesn't close in time — you'd want cash or a hybrid strategy.
When cash is NOT the right move on structural damage.
If the damage is cosmetic (hairline cracks, typical settling) and you can get an engineer's letter saying so, that letter alone usually unblocks a retail sale. $500 in engineer time turns the house from 'structural damage' to 'cosmetic only,' and you can list.
If the structural repair is well-scoped and under $25,000, doing the work before listing typically recovers 2–3x the repair cost in sale price. The math beats cash even counting contractor hassle.
And if your insurance covers the event that caused the damage (some earth-movement riders do cover sudden settling; most don't), filing the claim and rebuilding pays more than a cash sale ever will.
Cash offer · List with agent · Fix, then list.
The questions homeowners ask us first.
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