HOMELIGHT
HomeLight’s vision is a world where every real estate transaction is simple, certain, and satisfying.
We provide software and services to home buyers, sellers, and real estate agents including HomeLight Home Loans, HomeLight Closing Services, HomeLight Trade-In, and HomeLight Cash Offer.
Each year, HomeLight helps hundreds of thousands of clients buy & sell homes through top real estate agents, and facilitates billions of dollars of real estate business on the HomeLight platform.
What is
Homelight Cash Offer?
With HomeLight Cash Offer, you can access the power of cash — for free — so you can win your dream home and save money.
Here’s how it works:
Get approved
We do all of the work upfront to qualify you for a HomeLight Home Loan so you are prepared to buy the house you fall in love with. Already found the one? Don’t worry, we can approve your mortgage application in just 24 hours and the house within 4 hours.
Why make a
Homelight Cash Offer?
Certainty
Get your calendar and write your closing date in pen. HomeLight approves you and underwrites the home you’re making an offer on — you’re all clear to close. That makes your offer more certain than cash.
Speed
21 days, guaranteed. That’s as long as it will take to close on your new home. That’s more than twice as fast as the national average. Still not fast enough? We’ve got you covered and can close in as few as 8 days.*
Strength
3x more likely to win versus an offer with a loan.**
Savings
Gives you an edge in negotiations so you can buy your home on your terms.
What
Homelight Clients & Agents say
What is
Homelight Trade-In?
We buy your current home so you can avoid the stress, risk, and hassle of buying and selling at the same time.
Here’s how it works:
Get HomeLight's purchase price
We’ll work with your real estate agent to make an offer on your current home. That’s the price we’ll pay you for your current home as soon as you’re ready to move into your new home.
Make a strong offer on your new home
When you’ve found the home of your dreams, you’ll be ready to make an offer with no lending or home sale contingency. This means you’re more likely to close and can do so on your own timeline.
Move in on your schedule
Once your offer is accepted, everything comes together in days, not months. We buy your home at the purchase price so you get the cash to close on your dream home and control when you move.
Get full market value when we sell your home
We work with your agent to list your past home. If your home sells for more than the price HomeLight paid for it, we give you the additional cash minus selling costs and program fees.*
Homelight Trade-In
FAQ’s
When we purchase your home, we hold back the following:
• Agent fees, based on the fee you and your agent agree on
• Estimated listing prep work costs, based on a pre-listing inspection of the property
and your agent’s recommended prep work to get the home ready for market
• Estimated property ownership costs (e.g., property taxes, utility bills, property insurance, and HOA fees)*
• Our program fee*
We work with your agent to determine the appropriate listing price based on market comps and the home inspection. We want to list the property at a price that will attract the most buyers and get you the most money for your home. Additionally, we never want the property to sit on the market for more than 30 days, ensuring that your fee is as low as possible.
Though HomeLight will own your home at the time of listing, you will be consulted on any offers received. If, however, the home has not sold after 45 days of HomeLight owning the property, we reserve the right to act as the sole decision maker on accepting an offer.
Regardless of the home’s final sale price, HomeLight’s purchase price is the minimum amount you’ll receive at the end of the transaction. If for any reason the home sells for a lower price than what we paid, we absorb the loss.
We recommend you keep utilities in your name, but you will have the option to transfer utilities ownership to HomeLight, in which case we’d pay the costs. If HomeLight covers the costs, the following would be passed on to you: all transfer, start, and stop fees associated with utilities, the total cost of utilities, and a 20% surcharge for utility management. We include these costs in the property ownership costs that are outlined in the economic breakdown we provide to you, if you choose to have HomeLight take over utility payments.
Listing prep work is based on a pre-listing inspection of the property and your agent’s recommended prep work to get the home ready for the market.
Once HomeLight takes ownership of the property, we pay any vendors directly for any listing prep work including property repairs, home staging, and deep cleaning. We recover these costs at the sale of the property. Additionally, if you prefer, you will have the option to pay these costs directly to the vendors as the costs are incurred.
You are not required to use HomeLight Home Loans to finance the purchase of your new home, however the HomeLight Trade-In fee is lower if you choose to do so.
Our fees are calculated off of the final selling price of your current home. The percentage charged is dependent on your market, the lender you use, and the number of days we own your home. The day we close on the purchase of your current home is counted as day one.
You and your agent agree on the fees they’ll collect, just as you would in a traditional home sale process.
As HomeLight Settlement is in-house, working with them makes the closing experience as seamless as possible for you and your agent. Our Escrow Officers thoroughly understand the HomeLight Trade-In product and, because we use the same systems and processes, can expedite the transfer of relevant documents and information.
Please let your Client Manager know early on in the process that you have solar panels on your property. If you have a personal loan tied to the solar panels on your property, that loan will be paid off during the initial transaction when HomeLight purchases your home. If you are leasing the solar
panels, we will need to look into the terms of the lease to find the best way to transfer the lease through the HomeLight Trade-In transaction. Lastly, if you own the solar panels outright, please provide documentation of your ownership to your Client Manager.
Once HomeLight takes ownership of the property, we take over property insurance. The associated costs are included in the property ownership costs that are outlined in the economic breakdown we provide to you.
Closing costs work like they would for any other real estate transaction. When you sell your property to HomeLight you may incur closing costs such as settlement fees, title insurance policy, and other closing costs specific to your area. HomeLight also incurs its own set of closing costs both when we purchase your property from you and sell it on the open market. The fee that HomeLight charges covers any closing costs that we incur, we do not double charge you for our closing costs. The only exception is if there are city mandated transfer taxes where your property is located. As city transfer taxes can vary greatly, we pass this cost through to you rather than incorporating it into our fee structure. This ensures we can keep our fee as low as possible for all of our clients.