Cash buyers in San Diego generally pay between 70% and 85% of a home's after-repair value, minus the cost of the repairs themselves. The spread covers renovation, five to six months of holding costs, roughly 7–8% in resale costs, and the buyer's return. Houses needing little work land at the top of that range; heavily damaged houses land below it.
Ask most cash buyers what they pay and you will get a paragraph about "fair market value" and "every home is different." Both statements are true and neither is an answer. Here is the actual arithmetic, because you cannot evaluate an offer you do not understand.
The formula every cash buyer uses
There are only four variables, and every legitimate buyer in this market is working the same equation:
Offer = After-Repair Value − Repairs − Holding & Resale Costs − Return
The disagreements between buyers are not about the formula. They are about the inputs, and that is where you should focus your attention.
After-repair value (ARV)
What the house sells for once it is fully renovated. This comes from closed sales in the last three to six months, in the same neighbourhood, of similar size and lot, adjusted for condition. Not active listings, which are asking prices and reflect hope. Not an automated estimate, which cannot see that your comparable had a new kitchen and yours does not.
Repairs
What it costs to get the house to that renovated standard, priced at what contractors actually charge in San Diego County right now — not at the numbers from a 2019 spreadsheet. This is the single largest source of variance between offers, and the number most worth interrogating.
Holding and resale costs
Property taxes, insurance, utilities and the cost of capital across roughly five months, plus the cost of selling on the other side: agent commissions, closing costs and any concessions. Together these usually run about 9–11% of ARV. They are real and unavoidable, and they exist whether the buyer mentions them or not.
Return
The buyer's profit, typically around 10% of ARV on a standard project. Anyone claiming they work for nothing is either not telling the truth or not going to close.
A worked San Diego example
A three-bedroom, two-bath house in El Cajon. Original 1968 condition — old kitchen, one bathroom untouched, a roof at the end of its life, no central air, and a yard that has not been touched in a decade.
- After-repair value: $800,000, based on three renovated comparables within half a mile that closed in the last four months.
- Repairs: $96,000 — kitchen, two baths, roof, HVAC, flooring throughout, paint inside and out, landscaping, permits.
- Holding costs: $20,000 across about five months.
- Resale costs: $60,000 — commissions and closing on the way back out.
- Return: $80,000.
$800,000 − $96,000 − $20,000 − $60,000 − $80,000 = $544,000, or 68% of ARV. On a lighter-condition house — say $30,000 of work instead of $96,000 — the same formula produces roughly $610,000, which is 76% of ARV. That is the entire reason the "70–85%" range is a range rather than a number.
Three checks that tell you whether an offer is fair
1. Ask for the comps
Any buyer should be able to name the three closed sales their ARV rests on, with addresses and dates. If they will not, the number is not grounded in anything you can verify. You can check those addresses yourself on any public listing site in about four minutes.
2. Ask for the repair scope, itemised
"About a hundred grand" is not a scope. A line-item estimate is, and it is where inflated offers hide. If a buyer tells you the kitchen is $60,000 and you have a contractor friend who says $28,000, that is a conversation worth having before you sign.
3. Get more than one offer
Genuinely — get two or three. A buyer who discourages you from getting a second opinion is telling you something about their number. Legitimate buyers expect it. Just be careful that the competing offers are from actual buyers rather than wholesalers who will renegotiate later, which is a separate problem worth understanding.
When 70–85% is genuinely the better deal
Nobody should sell at a discount for no reason. The cases where the arithmetic actually favours a cash sale are specific:
- The house needs real work and you cannot fund it. Retail buyers pay retail prices for retail condition. If you cannot deliver that condition, the retail price was never available to you in the first place.
- The carrying cost is eating the difference. Three months of mortgage, taxes, insurance and utilities on a $900,000 San Diego house runs well past $18,000. Add prep and commissions and the gap between a listing and a cash offer narrows sharply.
- A date matters more than a price. Relocation, a purchase you have already committed to, a trustee's sale on the calendar. Certainty has a value, even though it never appears in a price comparison.
- The situation makes listing painful. Tenants, a probate, a divorce, a house full of belongings, a property that has already fallen out of escrow twice.
If none of those describe you — the house is in decent shape, you are not in a hurry, and nothing complicates the sale — list it. You will almost certainly net more, and any honest buyer will tell you so.
Run your own numbers
We publish our formula and the assumptions behind it, along with a calculator you can adjust yourself, on how we calculate your offer. Put your own numbers in before you talk to anyone — including us.
Published February 11, 2026 · Updated August 19, 2026. General information about San Diego County real estate, not legal, tax or financial advice.