The best cash home buyers in Massachusetts, compared.

Quick answerTwo operators in the entire state publish anything resembling a method, and neither publishes a percentage. Every percentage you have read was written by a listicle publisher, not by a buyer.

The standard explanation is that a cash buyer pays seventy percent of after-repair value minus the cost of repairs. It is a real rule of thumb and it is genuinely useful for sanity-checking an offer. It is not a Massachusetts figure, it is not a promise, and not one company on this page has published it as their policy.

Of nineteen Massachusetts operators we reviewed individually, exactly one publishes the inputs it uses: location, repairs needed, current condition, and comparable recent sales. It names four inputs and still publishes no weighting and no percentage. One other names its offer approach with a trademarked product name and publishes nothing behind it.

This matters more than it sounds. If nobody publishes a method, no ranking of these companies by price can be honest, because there is no price to rank. So we rank on the weight of evidence you can independently check: who they are, how long they have been doing it, what third parties say about them with a countable number attached, and what they will commit to in their own words on their own site.

• Ask for the after-repair value the buyer used and the repair figure they subtracted. Those are two numbers, not one, and a buyer who will not separate them is telling you something.
• Ask which comparable sales they used. Then look them up on the registry of deeds yourself, free.
• Get the offer in writing before you agree to anything, and compare the written number to the number you were told on the phone.

Quick answerOn the illustration above, the cash column nets about $147,767 less than listing as-is and about $172,693 less than renovating first, in exchange for 61 days and all of the risk.

Almost every comparison of cash offers against listing compares a gross number to a net number, which makes the listing route look better than it is. The table on this page compares net to net. Every deduction is named, every assumption is labeled as sourced, as a rule of thumb, or as something we invented for the illustration.

The deductions that are genuinely Massachusetts-specific are the deeds excise, which the seller pays at $4.56 per $1,000 in every county except Barnstable, and the seller's attorney, which is practice here rather than an option. The smoke and carbon monoxide certificate is a statutory condition of most residential sales and its fee is capped by building size under M.G.L. c.148 §10A, at $50 for a single-family and $150 for a triple-decker, and a cash buyer will often waive it by agreement.

Run the table again with your own repair estimate before you decide anything. The repair figure is the input that moves the answer most, and it is the one input nobody can supply for you.

Quick answerM.G.L. c.244 §35A gives you ninety days to cure, once in any five-year period. Published material still widely says 150 days. That was the pre-2016 rule.

The right to cure runs from the date of the notice, and the notice itself is a prescribed form. Ninety days is not the whole foreclosure timeline, it is the window before the lender may accelerate the loan, and the practical significance is that it is the period in which you still control what happens next.

The once-in-five-years limit is the part most people miss. If you used the right to cure on a previous default within the last five years, you may not have ninety days this time. Find your notice and read the date on it rather than relying on a general figure, including ours.

A cash sale is one legitimate way out of this, and it is not the only one. Loan modification, a short sale, and reinstatement all remain available during the cure period, and a HUD-approved counselling agency will discuss all of them with you at no cost. Any buyer who tells you a cash sale is your only option is not giving you advice, they are closing you.

Quick answer940 CMR 25.02 makes a foreclosure rescue transaction for compensation a per se violation of Chapter 93A. There is no cancellation window because the transaction is not permitted in the first place.

The pitch sounds like help. Someone offers to buy your house while you are in default and let you stay in it as a tenant, with an option to buy it back later. In other states that arrangement is regulated and comes with a rescission period. In Massachusetts the Attorney General simply prohibited it.

The state has enforced this. In December 2023 the Attorney General settled with a national sale-leaseback company for $200,000 and a permanent ban on Massachusetts sale-leaseback transactions. That company still appears on national lists of Massachusetts cash-sale options three years later, which tells you how little those lists are maintained.

If you are in default and someone proposes any version of sell now and stay on as a renter, stop and call the Attorney General's consumer hotline before you sign. You are not being difficult. You are looking at a transaction the state has already outlawed.

Quick answerThe rule requires attorney participation on behalf of the mortgage lender. In an all-cash sale there is no lender, so the only lawyer at the table is usually the buyer's, and that lawyer is not yours.

Sellers hear attorney state and relax, on the reasonable assumption that a lawyer is structurally required to be watching the transaction. The Supreme Judicial Court's holding is narrower than that. It attaches to the lender's side of a financed closing.

Take the financing away and the protection goes with it. The buyer's counsel prepares the deed, runs the closing and disburses the funds, and every one of those duties is owed to the buyer. Nothing prevents you from retaining your own attorney, and on these numbers the fee is a rounding error against the transaction.

A seller's attorney is also the person who will read the purchase and sale agreement for the terms this page keeps telling you to check: the deposit, the inspection contingency, the assignment clause, and whether the fee promises you were given verbally actually appear in the document.

Quick answerNo Massachusetts law requires a wholesaler to tell you they intend to assign your contract. Chapter 93A is your remedy, and it works best if you asked the question in writing.

A wholesaler signs a contract to buy your house and then sells that contract to an actual buyer for a fee. It is lawful and it is not automatically bad for you. What is bad for you is not knowing, because an assigned contract means the party who will actually close has not seen your house, has made you no promises, and may renegotiate.

We looked for a Massachusetts disclosure requirement and there is not one. What exists is Chapter 93A and 940 CMR 3.16, under which a material misrepresentation about who is buying your property is an unfair or deceptive act. If you win, attorney's fees and costs are mandatory. Double or treble damages are not automatic: c.93A §9(3) awards them only where the violation was willful or knowing, or where the other side refused in bad faith to make a reasonable settlement offer after your demand letter.

So ask, in an email, in these words: will you close on this property with your own funds, or do you intend to assign this contract to another party? Keep the reply. If the answer is that they may assign, that is fine and now you know to negotiate the deposit and the closing terms accordingly.

• Ask for proof of funds in the name of the entity on the contract, not a screenshot and not a letter about a different company.
• Ask whether the deposit is hard, meaning non-refundable after the inspection period, and how much it is. A small refundable deposit is a free option on your house.
• Look at the assignment clause. If it permits assignment and you do not want that, ask for it to be struck before you sign.

Quick answerTitle 5 requires a septic inspection within two years before most transfers. The smoke and CO certificate is a statutory condition of sale, with the fee capped by building size at $50 for a single-family and $150 for a triple-decker. Lead paint in pre-1978 housing has its own regime and it does not go away in a cash sale.

If your property is on septic, Title 5 requires an inspection within two years before transfer in most circumstances, and a failed system is one of the most common reasons a Massachusetts seller ends up talking to a cash buyer at all. A replacement system routinely runs into the tens of thousands. Exemptions exist and the state publishes guidance on them, so read the guidance before assuming you need the inspection.

The smoke and carbon monoxide alarm certificate is required from the local fire department for most residential sales, and M.G.L. c.148 §10A caps the fee by the size of the building: $50 for a single-family or a single unit, $100 for a two-family, $150 for a building of six residential units or fewer, and $500 above six. If both inspections are carried out at the same time, only one fee applies. On a triple-decker the cap is $150, not the $50 figure most published material quotes. A cash buyer will often agree to waive the inspection, which is a genuine convenience and is why it does not appear in the cash column of our table.

Massachusetts lead law applies to housing built before 1978 where a child under six lives. Selling does not extinguish it, and the property transfer notification requirements apply to a cash sale in the same way they apply to any other. If your buyer tells you none of this matters because they are paying cash, get that in writing and show it to your attorney.

Quick answerFour free public databases will tell you more about a counterparty in twenty minutes than any review page will. Use all four.

Start with the Secretary of the Commonwealth corporate database and look up the exact entity name written on the contract, not the brand on the website. Those differ more often than you would expect, and on this page alone several companies trade under a name that is not the name you would be signing with.

Then check the license. If the person you are dealing with claims to be a licensed broker or salesperson, the state license lookup will confirm it in seconds. A licensed counterparty is not automatically better, but a license claimed and not held is decisive.

Then check the registry of deeds, free, for the properties they say they have bought, and check the Better Business Bureau file for the business start date and the complaint count. Compare the business start date to the founding year on their website. On this page that single comparison disqualified companies and demoted others.

• Search the exact entity name from the contract, not the website brand.
• Look at the BBB business start date and the complaint count separately from the letter rating, and never read A+ and accredited as one phrase.
• Pull the deeds record for two or three of the properties they claim to have bought.
• If anything at all does not reconcile, ask them about it directly and keep the answer in writing.