That repair estimate sitting on your kitchen counter? You don't have to pay it. RCEA buys San Diego County houses that need major repairs — foundation, roof, mold, ancient electrical — for cash, exactly as they sit. No contractor bids, no fixes, no inspections to fail.
Here's the trap with a house that needs serious work: the traditional market punishes you twice. First, retail buyers — the families shopping the MLS — want move-in ready, so your house sits while renovated listings sell around it. Then the buyers who do show up bring inspectors, and every flaw becomes a renegotiation. You end up either paying for the repairs yourself or accepting discounts that add up to the same thing — months later, with far more stress.
And the repair numbers themselves are brutal. A roof replacement in San Diego County can run deep into five figures. Foundation work, mold remediation, full electrical or plumbing updates — each is a major project, and older houses rarely need just one. Contractors are booked out for weeks, permits take time, and managing a renovation you never wanted is a part-time job nobody applied for.
We do the math differently. As a cash buyer who renovates, we price the repairs ourselves and make you one written as-is offer. You skip the bids, skip the contractors, skip the permits, and skip the months of disruption. The house sells exactly as it sits today — valued on the finished home, minus our renovation costs, with no agent commissions coming out of your side.
Foundation cracks? Roof leaking? Not sure what's behind that wall? Just describe what you know. We'll do our own walkthrough and assessment — you don't need a contractor's report before we talk.
Getting three contractor bids is slow and sometimes expensive. We renovate houses for a living, so we know what the work costs. Our offer reflects real numbers, and we'll show you exactly how we got there.
No inspection contingency waiting to blow up the deal. No repair addendum. No renegotiation after we 'discover' things. The offer is for the house as it sits — period.
After closing, the repairs become our problem, not yours. Permits, contractors, surprises behind the drywall — all on us. You walk away clean.
Don't spend weeks collecting estimates for work you'll never do. We assess the property ourselves in a single walkthrough and build the repair costs into our offer.
Traditional buyers use inspections as leverage to chip away at the price. Our offer carries no inspection contingency — what we offer is what you get at closing.
Unpermitted addition? Open code enforcement case? We buy houses with these issues regularly and sort out permits and compliance after closing.
A leaking roof becomes structural damage. Mold spreads. Vacant houses attract trouble. Selling now stops the bleeding instead of funding another year of decline.
San Diego’s housing stock has signature problems, and we’ve seen all of them. Much of the county sits on expansive clay soils that swell and shrink with the seasons — behind a huge share of the foundation cracks and sticking doors in older El Cajon and East County homes. Near the coast, salt air corrodes everything metal while persistent marine moisture feeds mold in poorly ventilated bathrooms and crawl spaces. Inland, decades of harsh sun bake roofs past their useful life years early.
Then there's the age factor. Huge swaths of the county were built out from the 1950s through the 1970s — galvanized steel plumbing nearing the end of its life, original electrical panels that modern insurers frown at, and, in pre-1978 homes, the possibility of lead paint and asbestos that terrifies retail buyers and their inspectors. Unpermitted additions and garage conversions are also extremely common here, often done decades ago by long-gone owners, but they still complicate traditional sales today.
None of this scares us — it’s literally what we do. When we walk a property in Escondido or anywhere else in the county, we’re pricing a renovation, not judging a house. If you’ve been putting off a deteriorating property because the repair list feels endless, let’s talk — one conversation is all it takes to see your as-is number.
Roughly — but with an important difference: there's no agent commission (listing commissions are negotiable and vary; ~5–6% is a common historical range), no closing costs passed to you, and no months of mortgage payments while a listing sits. Compare our net cash number against what you'd actually walk away with after commissions, repairs, and carrying costs — not against a fantasy list price.
No — please don't. Collecting bids costs time and sometimes money, and you won't need them. We renovate houses professionally, so we estimate repair costs ourselves during our walkthrough and show you how the numbers feed into our offer.
Not for us. Unpermitted additions, garage conversions, and patio enclosures are extremely common across San Diego County. We buy houses with unpermitted work regularly and handle permits and compliance after closing. Just tell us what you know about.
No. Take what you want and leave the rest — we've bought houses in every imaginable condition, and cleanout is part of our renovation process after closing, not your problem before it.
Yes — foundation issues are one of the most common reasons owners call us, especially where expansive clay soils are involved. We'll assess it during our walkthrough and factor the repair into our offer. You don't need an engineer's report first, though you're welcome to share one if you have it.
Yes. Open code enforcement cases transfer with the property, and we resolve them as part of our renovation. Traditional buyers usually run from violations; we simply price them in. Check our general FAQ for more on as-is sales.
Free · No obligation · No repairs needed. Call or text, 7 days a week.
Free · No obligation · Written cash offer