Assignment fees in the Jacksonville market commonly run between $8,000 and $20,000. That is a healthy spread, and a spread that size tells you something useful before you talk to anybody: a large share of the people offering to buy your house here do not intend to be the ones who own it.
Cash home buyers in Jacksonville fall into four business models. Which one is calling you determines whether the number you accept is the number you receive at closing. This page explains how to tell them apart, what Florida law does and does not entitle you to be told, the seven questions to ask before you sign, and where the percentage claim you have read elsewhere breaks down.
A cash offer is only worth the probability that it closes at the stated number. Four models operate here — flippers, wholesalers who assign the contract to somebody else, rental holders, and lead companies that sell your phone number. Florida has no statute requiring a buyer to disclose that they intend to assign your contract. A handful of states have passed such laws in the last few years. Florida has not. So nobody is obliged to volunteer it, which makes asking directly — and getting the answer in the contract — the single most valuable thing you can do.
1. Flippers. They buy, renovate, and resell to a retail buyer. Their offer is tied to a repair estimate, which means it moves when the estimate moves. This is the model most associated with the re-trade: a number agreed at the kitchen table and revised downward after an inspection. Not all of them do it. Ask what happens to your price if their estimate changes.
In Jacksonville a flipper's exit almost always depends on insurance. Their retail buyer needs a mortgage, the lender needs a policy, and Florida carriers treat roof age as the dominant factor in whether they will write one. So a flipper's number on a house with an aging roof is really a bet on a roof quote. Ask what their exit is. It tells you how stable the offer is.
2. Wholesalers. They sign a contract with you and then sell that contract to a third party rather than closing in their own name. It is common here, and the assignment fees above are the reason. The risk to you is not the fee — it is that your closing now depends on a buyer you have never met, and if that buyer does not perform you are back at the start weeks later.
Florida adds a wrinkle worth understanding. The state exempts a person buying or selling real property for their own account from real estate licensing, and practicing as a broker without a license is a third-degree felony under Fla. Stat. § 475.42. Where the line between those sits for someone assigning a contract is a question for a Florida attorney, not a website, and we are not going to pretend to answer it here. The practical consequence for you is simple: ask in writing whether the person signing your contract intends to close on it or sell it. A straight answer costs an honest buyer nothing.
3. Rental holders. They buy, renovate lightly, and keep the house. They tend to be narrow about what they will take and uninterested in anything with a title problem, but they are the least likely to renegotiate, because the purchase is a line item rather than the whole trade.
4. Lead companies. The national brands and the postcards. Many are marketing operations that sell your information to local buyers. The signal is unmistakable: you fill out one form and get five calls in an hour, none of them from the company whose name was on the card. Several of them also run automatically generated neighborhood pages, which is why the same wording keeps appearing under different names.
Several of the large national real estate websites — the ones that also sell agent referrals — publish a fixed percentage-of-value band that cash buyers supposedly pay. It gets repeated often enough that Jacksonville sellers arrive expecting a specific fraction of their home's value.
The band is not so much wrong as meaningless. A cash offer is arithmetic: what the house is worth repaired, minus what the repairs actually cost, minus the cost of carrying and reselling it, minus the risk the buyer absorbs. A house needing a roof, a panel, and an air handler lands at the bottom of any such band. A house needing paint lands at the top — and a house needing nothing produces a number you should refuse, because you should be listing it instead. One band cannot describe both, which is why nobody who has walked your house quotes one.
We do not publish a percentage or a range anywhere on this site, and you should be skeptical of anyone who does — us included, if we ever start. A range on a website is a number invented before anyone saw your house.
What the referral sites leave out is the other side of the ledger: commission, the repairs a lender will require, insurance and taxes while the house sits, and — in Florida specifically — whether a policy can be written on it at all. On a sound, insurable house those still usually favor listing. On an uninsurable one they frequently do not, and the percentage comparison never shows it.
If your house is structurally sound and insurable, in a neighborhood with real buyer demand — much of Riverside, Avondale, Mandarin, Southside and the beaches — list it with an agent. A retail buyer is purchasing a home; every buyer on this page is purchasing a project. Even after commission and a couple of months of holding costs, a sound house usually nets more on the open market.
And if the only thing between your house and a retail sale is a roof, get it quoted before you accept any cash offer. Replacing it can restore insurability and put the house back in front of financed buyers for less than the offers will differ by. We say that knowing what it costs us.
A cash sale earns its discount when no carrier will write the house, when the repair list is longer than you can fund, when the estate is unresolved or homestead has put several signatures on the deed, when heirs are scattered, when a tax certificate has already been sold, when a foreclosure case is running, or when managing the house from another state has stopped being worth the difference.
We are an Oklahoma-based company. We have bought houses in Tulsa for more than 25 years and we are new to Jacksonville — we would rather tell you that than have you discover it. We have no local tenure here and we are not going to claim any.
Three commitments, which are the same ones we would want from a buyer:
We do not sell houses to the public, maintain a roster of investors, or advertise property. We are the buyer.
And if we walk your house and conclude you should list it, we will say so and tell you why. That costs us the deal and it is still the honest answer.
The category is not. Most companies buying houses for cash here run one of four legitimate business models, and assigning a contract is normal commercial practice rather than fraud. What is genuinely predatory is narrower and easy to spot: a number quoted before anyone saw the house, a price revised downward late, earnest money the buyer keeps control of, a memorandum recorded against your property, and pressure to sign the same day.
Not under any Florida statute we are aware of. Some states have passed wholesaler-disclosure laws in the last few years; Florida has not. That means the burden is on you to ask, and the right time is before you sign, not after. Ask whether they will close in their own name, ask for the answer in the agreement, and treat reluctance as information.
Ask for proof of funds — a bank letter or statement dated within the last month — and ask which title company or closing attorney they use. Then ask whether they intend to close in their own name or assign, because an assigned contract means the money is coming from a party you have not vetted. You can also confirm in minutes whether the company is registered to do business in Florida.
There is no reliable percentage, and the ranges published on national real estate sites are marketing rather than measurement. An offer is what the house is worth repaired, less the actual repair cost, less the cost of holding and reselling it, less the risk the buyer takes on. In Florida the largest single variable is usually insurability — a house no carrier will write has no financed buyers competing for it, and that shows up in every number you are quoted.
Yes, and any buyer worth dealing with will encourage it. Compare on more than price: who holds the earnest money, whether the buyer is closing or assigning, what happens to the number after an inspection, and how each one handles whatever your title needs. The highest opening number is frequently not the highest amount actually received at closing.
Some will and most will not. Florida makes this harder than most states, because homestead rules can put a surviving spouse and every remainderman on the signature line, and because an out-of-state person may not qualify to serve as personal representative. Buyers who can only close on clean title will hand that problem back to you. Selling an inherited house in Jacksonville sets out the routes and what each one pays, and selling a house in probate in Florida covers the court process.
This is general information, not legal advice. Talk to a Florida attorney about your specific situation.
Get a no-obligation cash offer or an honest read on what the house is worth — call (904) 658-7295 or request an offer online.