You’ll see a lot of courses that claim to tell you how to get cash at closing when you buy real estate. It certainly is possible but the odds of being able to do it are much lower than they tell you on the infomercials. The first thing to consider is you usually have to buy a house or property for less than the appraised value, that’s a given. Then you generally have to get financing for the appraised value so you can get the difference when you close. Here’s the problem, people don’t want to sell below what their property is appraised at so they simply don’t.

How to get cash at closing then?

The only way you’re probably going to get cash at closing is if you buy a house from a homeowner who’s in foreclosure or other financial trouble, and has equity in the place to give you the place at a lower price than it’s worth. This may be a home they are trying to sell and cannot, or they need to sell quick as they have bought another home and a motivated buyer. These types of people are rare, you see signs all over the place “will buy your home today” and there’s a lot of people looking to get a steal, some even work with Realtors to give them a finders fee on a real deal if one came up.

The thing to keep in mind on the courses and books on how to get cash at closing is they may tell you how to put up signs or ads in the paper, but they don’t tell you there’s hundreds of other people in your area doing the same thing and the competition is fierce. Add to that I just don’t know how good I’d feel going around to people and offering them $30,000 less than their house is worth to take advantage of their situation, maybe all the equity they have in the home. You’ll see all these people on infomercials showing their couple of checks they got, but most of those people have been doing it decades and only got a deal like that a couple of times. There’s a reason some put up that disclaimer “this is a top student and results are not typical” and it’s because those results aren’t typical! Before you spend thousands of dollars and years trying to cash at closing, keep in mind those ads and web sites you see offering the course are playing on your greed. Buying a few hundred lottery tickets would probably give you a better chance at a fat check.