Is That Cash Offer Real? Check The Deposit.

The deposit is the tell

Look at the escrow deposit on the contract. That figure is the only money a buyer actually has at risk if they walk away, which makes it the most honest sentence in the document.

A serious buyer puts up at least $5,000 to $10,000. If the deposit line says $1, or $100, or $500, you are almost certainly not looking at someone who intends to close. You are looking at someone tying up your house for free while they try to find a real buyer to take their place.

Think about what a $1 deposit actually means. It means the worst thing that happens to them if they disappear is that they lose a dollar. Meanwhile your house has been off the market for thirty days, and if you were selling because of a foreclosure date or a probate deadline, those thirty days were the ones that mattered.

Who is holding the deposit

The deposit should be held by a licensed title company. Not by the buyer. Not by the buyer's own company. Not "on file" somewhere.

A licensed escrow agent has obligations to both sides and cannot simply hand the money back because the buyer changed their mind. If a buyer is vague about who holds the deposit, or names an entity you can't look up, that is worth as much attention as the amount itself.

Ask directly: which title company, and can I see the escrow receipt? A real buyer answers in one sentence and sends it.

Is it a standard FAR/BAR contract?

Florida has a standard residential contract, the FAR/BAR, produced jointly by the Florida Realtors and the Florida Bar. Nearly every legitimate residential transaction in this state runs on it, and its terms are known to every real estate attorney and title company in Florida.

When someone hands you a contract that is not the FAR/BAR, ask why. There are legitimate reasons a buyer uses their own paperwork. There is also a common illegitimate one: a bespoke contract can be written with an escape hatch on every page, a deposit that is refundable for any reason, and an inspection period long enough to go and find somebody else to buy your house.

You do not have to be able to read a contract like a lawyer. You do have to notice when you have been handed one nobody else in Florida uses.

Two more things worth a look

• The buyer's name. If it reads "[Company] and/or assigns", the buyer has reserved the right to hand your contract to someone else. See the next section — that is not the red flag people think it is, but it should be a conversation rather than a discovery.
• The inspection period. A long inspection period paired with a tiny deposit is the combination to watch. Together they mean the buyer can walk for any reason, at any point, at almost no cost.

Assignment is not the red flag. An empty deposit is.

People collapse these two things together and they are not the same. Assigning a contract means the buyer transferred it to someone else before closing. On its own, that tells you almost nothing. What tells you something is whether anybody had money at risk.

Picture the two versions side by side. In the first, the buyer put up a dollar, has no ability to close, and spends your inspection period trying to find someone who will take the contract off their hands. If nobody does, they walk, and you have lost a month and gained nothing. You were carrying all of the risk from the moment you signed.

In the second, the buyer has real money sitting in escrow at a title company, has committed to closing, and brings in a partner — often a general contractor who can do more with the property than they can, or a financial partner when they have several projects running at once — so that the closing still happens on the terms you agreed. Your price does not change. Your date does not change. Somebody with money on the line has made sure the thing they promised you actually happens.

Same word on the contract. Completely different position for you.

So do not ask "will you assign this?" Ask the two questions that separate them: is your deposit real money in a licensed title company's escrow, and if a partner fell through, would you still close?

Where we sit on this

Since this page is telling you what to look for, it would be poor form not to say where we stand.

We do sometimes bring in a partner on a purchase. Usually that is a general contractor who can add more value to the property than we can, or a financial partner when we have a lot of projects running at once. We do it so that a deal we have committed to still closes — not to find a way out of one.

What does not change when that happens: the deposit is real, it sits with a licensed title company, and the price and closing date you signed stay exactly as they are. If we ever could not close on something, the honest thing is to say so rather than quietly shop your contract around, and that is what we would do.

Hold us to the same test as everyone else. Ask us the five questions below.

Ask them what they've actually done

This is the test that costs you nothing and is almost impossible to fake. Ask a buyer to tell you about properties they've closed on, and about the work they did afterward.

Someone who really does this is proud of it. You will not be able to stop them talking about the roof they replaced, the window permits they had to close out, the plumbing they found behind a wall, the electrical panel that had to come out, the week they spent going back and forth with the city, the inspector who failed them twice, the re-occupancy they had to negotiate. That is the texture of the actual job, and people who have done it enjoy telling you.

Someone who has never closed on a house will move the conversation somewhere else within a sentence or two. They will talk about their process, their team, how fast they can move — anything except a specific property and what happened at it.

So ask plainly: what have you bought, and what did you do to it? Ask for a list of past closings. Ask for an address you can drive past. The answer tells you more about whether this person can close than any figure on a contract does.

What to ask before you sign

• How much is the deposit, and when does it go into escrow?
• Which licensed title company is holding it?
• Is this the standard Florida FAR/BAR contract?
• How long is the inspection period, and what can you cancel for?
• If you brought in a partner, or assigned this, would you still close on the same price and date?
• What have you bought recently, and what work did you do on it?

Any buyer who is annoyed by those five questions has told you something useful.

None of this is legal advice, and a real estate attorney reading the actual contract is worth far more than an article. But you can check the deposit and the escrow holder yourself, in about a minute, before anyone gets paid to look at anything.

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Other guides

Selling a House in Probate · Inherited a House That Needs Work · When Heirs Disagree · Selling a Hoarder House · Open Permits & Violations · Stalled Builds & Unsafe Structures · Inherited a Reverse Mortgage · Behind on an FHA Loan