How Much Does a Cash Offer Really Cost You in Columbus? 3,331 Cash Sales, Measured

Short answer: on the open market, a cash buyer costs you about 2.8 percent of your original list price and saves you about 12 days. On a $300,000 Columbus home, that is roughly $8,400 to close 12 days sooner. Whether that is a good trade depends entirely on what those 12 days are worth to you, and the honest answer for most sellers is that they are not worth $8,400.

But the number that should actually change your decision is this one: the discount is not the same for everyone. Below $150,000, cash sold 7.6 points under original list compared with financed sales. Above $750,000, there was no measurable gap at all. The cheaper your house, the more a cash sale costs you, and that is precisely backwards from how the offers are pitched.

I pulled every closing recorded in the Columbus MLS from January 1 through August 3, 2026 that listed both an original list price and its financing terms. That is 17,542 sales: 3,331 cash and 14,211 financed. Below is what the two groups actually did.

How Much Less Do Cash Buyers Pay in Columbus?

Cash sales closed at a median 97.2 percent of original list price. Financed sales closed at 99.4 percent.

That raw 2.2 point gap understates it slightly, because cash buyers are not shopping the same houses. The median cash purchase was a $297,000 home built in 1982. The median financed purchase was a $352,000 home built in 1988. Cash concentrates on older and cheaper inventory, which sells below list more often regardless of how it is paid for.

So I ran it again inside price bands, which removes most of that distortion. Weighted across bands, the cash discount is 2.8 points of original list price.

What Does a Cash Offer Cost at My Price Point?

This is the table that matters, and it is the one nobody advertising a fast cash sale will show you.

Price band	Cash sales	Financed sales	Cash sold at	Financed sold at	Cash discount
Under $150,000	751	508	88.5%	96.0%	7.6 points
$150,000 to $250,000	619	2,847	96.6%	98.7%	2.1 points
$250,000 to $350,000	596	3,613	97.9%	100.0%	2.1 points
$350,000 to $500,000	628	3,987	98.7%	100.0%	1.3 points
$500,000 to $750,000	453	2,319	98.9%	99.2%	0.3 points
Above $750,000	284	937	100.0%	100.0%	none measurable

Read the first column alongside the last one. Under $150,000, cash buyers outnumbered financed buyers, 751 sales to 508. That is the only band in the entire Columbus market where that is true, and it is also the band where cash costs the seller the most.

That is not a coincidence. It is the business model. The heaviest cash activity sits exactly where the discount is steepest and where sellers are least likely to have an agent running the numbers for them.

Do Cash Offers Actually Close Faster?

Yes, and this is the part of the pitch that holds up.

Median time from accepted contract to closing was 17 days for cash and 29 days for financed. Cash really is about 12 days quicker.

But look at where that speed does and does not appear. Median time from listing to signed contract was 11 days for both groups, identical. Cash buyers do not find your house faster and they do not decide faster. The entire advantage arrives after the contract is signed, because there is no lender, no appraisal, and no underwriting.

The spread inside cash closings is also wider than people expect. Of 3,354 cash sales, 570 closed within a week, but 637 took more than 31 days. Cash does not automatically mean fast. It means no lender, which is a different thing.

Where in Columbus Does Cash Cost the Most?

The discount varies by market as much as it does by price.

Market	Cash sales	Cash sold at	Financed sold at	Gap
Columbus	1,044	96.7%	100.0%	3.3 points
Hilliard	103	98.0%	100.0%	2.0 points
Dublin	146	98.5%	100.0%	1.5 points
Lancaster	98	97.8%	98.9%	1.2 points
Powell	92	97.5%	98.3%	0.8 points
Westerville	167	99.6%	100.0%	0.4 points

In Westerville, taking cash cost sellers four tenths of a point. In the city of Columbus it cost more than eight times that. The pattern tracks price and competition: where financed buyers are bidding aggressively, a cash buyer has to meet the market, and where they are not, cash has leverage.

Is a We-Buy-Houses Offer the Same as This?

No, and this is the most important limitation of everything above, so I want to be direct about it.

Every figure here describes cash buyers competing for homes that were listed on the open market. Those buyers had to beat other offers, which is why they paid 97 percent of list. That is what competition does.

An unsolicited offer on your house is not competing with anyone. It is a private negotiation with one party, on a house nobody else has bid on, and those transactions do not appear in MLS records at all, so I cannot measure them here and neither can anyone else who is being honest with you.

What I can tell you is the benchmark. If a buyer approaching you directly is offering meaningfully less than about 97 percent of what your house would list for, they are charging you more than the open market charges for the exact same cash certainty. That is the number to hold their offer against.

What Should You Do If You Need to Sell Quickly?

Get a real number on the house first. Not an automated estimate, an actual figure built on comparable sales. You cannot evaluate any offer without knowing what you are being offered a percentage of, and this is the step people skip when they are under time pressure.

Ask what the 12 days are worth. That is the real product being sold. If you are carrying two mortgages, settling an estate, or facing a relocation date, 12 days and a guaranteed close are worth real money. If you are simply tired of the idea of showings, $8,400 is an expensive way to avoid them.

Know that listing does not rule out a cash buyer. This is the part the marketing obscures. Cash buyers are 19 percent of the Columbus market. Listing your home exposes it to all of them at once, which is exactly why the MLS cash discount is only 2.8 percent instead of whatever a single unsolicited offer proposes.

Check the band you are in. If your house is under $150,000, you are in the one price range where cash historically costs sellers the most, and you should be most skeptical there, not least.

What Does This Data Not Tell You?

These are recorded MLS closings, not an official board report. My export, my computation, January 1 through August 3, 2026, covering only sales that reported both an original list price and financing terms.

Off-market sales are entirely invisible here. Wholesale transactions, direct investor purchases, and anything that never hit the MLS are not in this dataset, and those are precisely the transactions a fast-cash advertisement is proposing.

Sold terms are as reported by the listing agent. The field is reliable in aggregate and occasionally miscoded on individual sales.

Condition is not captured. Some part of the discount in the lowest band reflects homes that could not have been financed at all, and no amount of statistical control fully separates that from negotiating leverage.

A median is not your house. Every band here spans a wide range of condition, location and circumstance.

What Would Your House Actually Sell For?

The whole decision turns on one number you probably do not have yet, which is what your home would bring listed and properly marketed. Every offer is a percentage of that figure, and without it you are negotiating blind.

I have been reading houses like a builder and pricing them off comparable sales for years, and I will put your number together before you talk to anybody about a fast sale, whether or not you end up listing with me. Send me the address and I will run it.

Start here: get a real home value estimate, built on comparable sales rather than an algorithm.

If speed is the actual constraint, that is a conversation worth having properly. Contact Adam Geuy at NextHome Experience, or grab a time at calendly.com/adam-geuy.