Relocation, Texas
Selling Your Texas House for a Relocation — Cash Close on Your Timeline
Relocation is the deadline that makes everything else complicated. You have a report date at the new location, movers coming in three weeks, a spouse already on the ground, a kid mid-semester, and a Texas house that needs to be off the books before the carrying cost from two cities grinds the budget. We close on your move date — earlier if you want to stop the burn, later if your dates slip. The offer is built around the calendar you actually have, not the calendar a traditional listing would prefer.
Who reaches out
The five relocation patterns we work with
Relocation sales are different from every other category we work because the seller is usually doing five other hard things at the same time — packing, switching schools, coordinating movers, getting the spouse oriented at the new location, sometimes starting a new job the week the truck arrives. Almost no one calls us about a relocation sale because they are excited about the math. They call because they want one thing crossed off the list and they want it crossed off on a calendar that actually matches their move. The five patterns below cover almost every relocation call we get from Texas sellers.
Corporate transfer with a hard report date
The employer moved you — promoted, restructured, or "the project is in Austin/Phoenix/Atlanta now and the team goes too." There is a report date at the new location and your manager expects you to be functional by then. The Texas house is now a logistics problem on top of the new-job problem. The DFW corporate corridor — TI Sherman, Toyota Plano, Charles Schwab Westlake, JPMorgan, Caterpillar, Goldman Sachs Dallas — produces a steady flow of these calls, in both directions: people moving into the metroplex and people being pulled out of it. We close around the report date, not against it.
Military PCS — Permanent Change of Station
PCS orders typically give you a 30 to 60 day reporting window, sometimes less, and sometimes the orders get amended after you have already started packing. Texas has a heavy military footprint — Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls, Naval Air Station Fort Worth JRB, Dyess AFB in Abilene, Fort Cavazos in Killeen, Fort Bliss in El Paso, Randolph and Lackland in San Antonio, JBSA-Fort Sam Houston — and we work with active-duty sellers around all of them. A dedicated PCS guide is queued; in the meantime, see our Wichita Falls (Sheppard AFB) page for the local context, and call us with your orders in hand.
Family relocation — spouse's job, eldercare, school district
The move is driven by the family, not your employer. The spouse took a job in another state. A parent needs care and you are moving to be near them. A child needs a specific school district or treatment program that does not exist in your current city. The Texas house was the right house for the chapter you were in; it is not the right house for the next one. Family relocations rarely have an employer relocation package behind them, which means the carrying-cost math on holding the house through a slow listing falls entirely on you.
Snowbird or retiree moving permanently out of Texas
You moved to Texas for the tax math, the lower cost of living relative to your former state, or to be closer to family at the time. Things changed — the grandchildren moved to Denver, the heat stopped being tolerable, the property tax bill got worse than expected, or the family member you moved here for is no longer here. The Texas house is now in the wrong place. We close on your timeline so you can finish the move-out without coordinating showings against packing.
Cost-of-living refugee — Texas got more expensive than expected
Texas has been a top in-migration state for years, but the inflow has also produced an outflow that gets less press coverage. People moved to Texas for the tax math and the affordability and discovered, after two or three years, that the property tax bill at 1.6 to 1.8 percent of assessed value adds up faster than the no-state-income-tax math saves, that the homeowner's insurance market priced in the hail and wind exposure aggressively after the 2021 freeze and the 2024 wind seasons, that the summer is what people warned about, and that the distance from family in the Midwest or the Northeast started to matter more than it did at first. None of that is a failure — it is just a recalculation. We close on your timeline so you can finish the move without the carrying-cost burn.
The load-bearing section
Honest math: us vs. your employer relocation package
If your employer is paying for the move, there is almost always a relocation management company in the picture — Cartus, BGRS, Sirva, Weichert, or a similar third-party RMC contracted by your HR department to handle relocations at scale. The package usually includes some combination of moving services, temporary housing, househunting trips, and — the part that matters for this conversation — a home-sale assistance program. Before you call us, find out which version of the home-sale program your employer offers and what conditions attach to it. The structure of the offer determines whether we are the right answer or whether you should take what your employer is paying for. Three scenarios, with the honest math on each.
You have a guaranteed buyout offer at roughly 95 percent of FMV — take it
The classic third-party-RMC structure: the relocation company commissions three independent appraisals, averages them, multiplies the average by roughly 95 percent (the exact percentage varies by employer and RMC), and offers you that number as a guaranteed buyout. They take the property off your hands at that price on a date you choose. They then market and resell the home on their own, absorbing any loss between their buyout price and their eventual resale price. On a normal Texas home in normal condition, that 95 percent FMV number will beat what we can pay, and it should. The RMC is being paid by your employer to offer you a price that the open market would not — that subsidy is a benefit you earned by working for your employer, and you should take it.
The verification questions to ask before signing the RMC documents: Are the three appraisals from appraisers you trust, with comparable sales that reflect your specific neighborhood? Is the 95 percent figure actually 95, or is it 92, 90, or 88 after closing-cost deductions and program fees? Are there conditions that disqualify you from the program retroactively — staying employed for a specific period, declining the offer triggering a different program, repaying the buyout if you leave within a year? If the answers to those questions are clean, sign the RMC documents. We are not the right answer for you.
You have a Buyer-Value Option (BVO) — try the open market first, we are the backstop
A BVO is the lighter-weight version of the RMC home-sale program. Instead of buying the house from you outright, the RMC helps you list it on the open market — covering some combination of agent commission, closing costs, and occasional staging or repair credits. If a retail buyer comes through in the window your employer gives you, that path typically nets the most money. The problem is the window. Texas open-market sales in 2025 average 60 to 90 days from list to close in most major metros, longer in slower markets and on homes that need work. If your report date is 30 days out and you do not have a committed offer in hand, the BVO program may roll into a "back-up buyout" at a reduced percentage (often 85 to 90 percent of FMV) — and that back-up price is where the math gets closer to what we can pay.
The practical move: list under the BVO program the day you get the relocation packet. If the listing is not generating offers by day 21 and your move date is real, call us. We can write an offer that closes inside your window with no inspection-driven renegotiation, no financing contingency, and a fixed close date. You decide whether to keep the listing live or pivot to us based on which path actually closes in time.
No employer package, or the conditions disqualify you — we are competitive
Most relocations do not come with a corporate home-sale program. Family moves, spouse-driven moves, retirements, cost-of-living moves, smaller-employer transfers, and many military PCS moves are funded by the seller, not a third-party RMC. Even within corporate transfers, the home-sale program sometimes disqualifies specific properties — significant deferred maintenance, foundation history, prior insurance claims, properties in unusual locations, properties that recently appraised low — and the relocating employee finds out mid-process that the buyout they were counting on is not available to them. In any of those cases, we compete on speed and certainty: a 7-day close, no appraisal-driven price change, no financing contingency, no inspection-driven renegotiation, no commission. The offer is the offer. Whether that nets you more than a 60-day open-market listing depends on what condition the house is in, how long it takes to sell on the open market in your specific submarket, and what the carrying cost during that window actually is. We will run that math with you honestly.
The framing we want you to leave this section with: a corporate relocation buyout at 95 percent of FMV is a subsidy your employer is paying. We are not trying to talk you out of accepting it, and we are not going to dress up our offer to look like it competes when it does not. Our role in relocation sales is the backstop — the option when the employer package does not fit, when the timeline does not work, when the home does not qualify, or when you do not have an employer package at all. If you are unsure which category you are in, call us and we will help you read your relocation packet. We do that conversation for free.
We are not a relocation consultant, an employee benefits attorney, or a tax advisor. The descriptions of relocation-management-company programs above are general industry shape, not specific to any particular RMC or employer agreement — confirm details with your HR department and the actual RMC paperwork before signing.
The timeline tool
What timing flexibility actually looks like
Closing date is the lever that matters most on a relocation sale. A traditional listing closes when the retail buyer's lender is ready, not when you need to be out. We work the other direction: you tell us the date that fits your move and we structure around it. Three patterns cover almost every relocation deal.
Close BEFORE your move date
We close as soon as title is clear — often 9 days from contract — and you have the proceeds in hand before the move truck arrives. The house sits empty on our books from closing through your move date, which means the carrying-cost meter (mortgage, insurance, utilities, property tax accrual) stops on the closing date instead of weeks later. This is the right play if you are still paying on the Texas house and a new mortgage or new rent at the destination is about to overlap. The earlier we close, the less burn.
Close ON your move date
You walk out of the house on moving day, we walk in the same afternoon. No overlap on either side. This is the cleanest version of a relocation close — no rent-back, no early-vacate logistics, no key handoff coordination. It works when your move date is firm, when you are not paying double housing costs during a transition, and when the timeline for the contract-to-close window matches your packing schedule.
Rent-back from us
We close early — putting the proceeds in your account and stopping the carrying cost — and you lease the house back from us at an agreed monthly rate for an agreed period, typically 30 to 60 days. This is the right tool if the destination house has not closed yet, if movers cannot be scheduled until later, or if the kid's school year ends in two months and you do not want to move twice. Not every property is the right fit — ask during the offer conversation and we will price the rent-back option alongside the standard offer.
Why a cash sale, not a listing
What we do that a traditional listing cannot
A traditional listing is the right answer when you have time and the home shows well. Relocation sales rarely have time, and the relocating seller is usually too busy with the rest of the move to stage, photograph, and coordinate showings on top of everything else. Three concrete differences between our process and a listing, framed in the language of what actually wastes your time during a move.
Fixed close date — you know exactly when the money lands
On a listing, the close date is whenever the buyer's lender is ready, which shifts. With us, the closing date is whatever you pick during the contract phase and that is the date funds wire. If you need the proceeds in your account on a specific day to close on the destination house or to fund a move, we close on that day.
No agent showings to coordinate while you are packing
No "be ready in 30 minutes" notifications from the listing app while you are mid-box. No needing to leave the house, take the kids and the dog, and re-clean three times a week for the next month. We walk the house once during the offer phase. After that you do not have to clean, stage, or vacate for anyone.
No inspector callouts that kill the deal at the last minute
On a listing, the buyer's inspector finds something at day 30 of escrow and the buyer's agent uses it to renegotiate price or terminate. That happens, and on a relocation timeline it is catastrophic — you have to relist and the original closing date you planned the move around is gone. Our offer is not contingent on inspection findings. Once we sign, the price holds.
How it works
Our process for relocation sales
Four steps, designed to fit around the rest of the move. Most of the process happens remotely; the only on-site visit is a single property walkthrough during the offer phase, scheduled around your packing calendar.
- 1
Tell us your move date and the address
Address, your hard move date (or the window if it is still flexible), what is driving the relocation, and whether you have an employer relocation package on the table. That is the entire intake. We do not need photos. We do not need a financial disclosure. If you have a corporate relo packet you want a second read on, attach it to the form or bring it to the call.
- 2
We pull title and comparable sales, then walk the property
We pull the county appraisal record, the deed and lien history, recent comparable retail sales in your specific submarket, and any city or county records on file. Then we come look at the property — a single 20 to 45 minute walkthrough at a time we coordinate around your schedule. You do not need to be there. You do not need to clean. You do not need to stage.
- 3
Written offer with the math — and the close date you pick
We send a written offer that shows our work — comparable retail sales, renovation budget at investor-retail labor rates, any liens or arrears the title search surfaced, closing costs, and the margin we need to underwrite the deal. The offer includes the close date you specified during the intake call, and if a rent-back makes sense it includes the rent-back terms alongside the standard offer. What you sign is what funds. No inspection-driven renegotiation, no surprise reductions the week before close.
- 4
Close at title — proceeds wired or check at closing
The title company opens escrow, clears any liens and tax pro-rations at the closing table, and coordinates the closing. If you have already moved out of state, a mobile notary comes to your new address. Proceeds wire on the day of funding or you take a cashier's check at closing — your call. The carrying-cost meter on the Texas house stops the same day.
Our broader process is documented on the how it works page, and the general questions sellers ask live in the FAQ.
Honesty matters
What we do not do — relocation-specific
A relocation is already stressful. The last thing it needs is a high-pressure cash-buyer pitch on top of it. Three things we deliberately do not do, and the reason for each.
We do not replace your employer relo package without your call
If you have a guaranteed buyout offer from your employer's RMC at roughly 95 percent of FMV and the program conditions are workable, take it. We will tell you the same thing on the phone. We are not going to pretend our offer competes with a corporate subsidy that exists specifically to make sure relocating employees do not lose money on their home sale. Our role is the backstop, not the replacement.
We do not lock you in
You can take our written offer to a Realtor, to a relocation specialist, to your HR department, to a family member, or to another cash buyer and compare it against anything else on the table. No exclusivity clause. No penalty for walking away. No "if you do not sign in 24 hours the offer expires" pressure tactic. You already have a real deadline — your move date — and we are not going to manufacture a fake one on top of it.
We do not add fees at closing
The offer we send is the offer that funds. No surprise inspection-driven price renegotiation, no "we found something at the walkthrough and need to renegotiate" phone call the day before closing, no assignment fee buried in the addendum, no commission. The closing statement at the title company shows the offer amount, standard customary closing costs, the lender payoff if any, prorated property tax, and the net to you. What we put in writing is what funds.
PCS sellers
Military PCS — same process, different urgency
A Permanent Change of Station is the relocation version that runs on the tightest clock. PCS orders typically give 30 to 60 days from receipt to the report-date at the new duty station, and sometimes considerably less. The orders can be amended after issue — accelerated, delayed, or rerouted — and the servicemember does not get to negotiate the date. The home sale has to happen around the orders, not the other way around.
Texas has a significant military presence: Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls, Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base, Dyess AFB in Abilene, Fort Cavazos in Killeen, Fort Bliss in El Paso, Randolph AFB and Lackland AFB and JBSA-Fort Sam Houston in the San Antonio area. We have worked with active-duty sellers around all of those bases and our process accommodates the PCS timeline — short contract-to-close windows, mobile-notary closings at the new duty station, sponsor on title with the dependent moving separately, the SCRA and DLA mechanics where they apply, and the chance of orders being amended mid-transaction.
The Sheppard AFB market in Wichita Falls is one of the densest PCS flows we see;
our Wichita Falls city page
covers the local market context. A dedicated PCS pillar is queued —
/situations/military-pcs-texas
— and will cover the SCRA mechanics, the homeowners assistance program (HAP), and
the specific Texas-base context in depth. In the meantime, the process on this
page is the same one we run for PCS sellers. Call with your orders in hand and
we will walk through the timeline.
Statewide service area
Where we buy relocator houses in Texas
Statewide. Relocation sales cluster around the corporate corridors and the military bases, but they happen everywhere. The DFW corporate corridor — Texas Instruments' Sherman fab, Toyota's Plano headquarters, Charles Schwab's Westlake campus, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs in Dallas, Caterpillar in Irving — is our densest relocation footprint, but the base-adjacent cities, the Houston energy corridor, the Austin tech relocations, and the Hill Country snowbird departures are all real pipelines too. Below are the cities with dedicated guides and where relocation deals concentrate.
DFW corporate corridor and surrounding cities with dedicated guides
The TI Sherman fab, Toyota Plano, and the Schwab Westlake corridor produce a steady flow of inbound and outbound transferee calls. Our dedicated city pages walk through the local market context.
Military-base markets and major metros
We buy in all the base-adjacent markets and across every major metro. Dedicated city guides for the largest base markets — Killeen (Fort Cavazos), Abilene (Dyess AFB), San Antonio (Randolph, Lackland, JBSA-Fort Sam Houston), and El Paso (Fort Bliss) — are queued. Until those publish, the statewide process on this page applies. The intake, the offer math, and the closing process are identical.
- Sheppard AFB — Wichita Falls (city page) and surrounding Wichita County.
- Fort Cavazos — Killeen, Harker Heights, Copperas Cove, Temple, surrounding Bell and Coryell counties.
- Dyess AFB — Abilene and surrounding Taylor County.
- Fort Bliss — El Paso and surrounding El Paso County.
- San Antonio bases (Randolph, Lackland, JBSA-FSH) — San Antonio, Universal City, Schertz, Cibolo, surrounding Bexar and Guadalupe counties.
- NAS Fort Worth JRB — White Settlement, Westworth Village, west Fort Worth.
- Major metros — Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and beyond. Statewide service.
If your situation overlaps with another pillar — the house has been vacant since you moved, the property was inherited and the heir is relocating away from it, the relocation forced a foreclosure timeline — those guides go deeper on the relevant Texas law. See our vacant house Texas guide, the foreclosure Texas guide, and the broader situations index. For the general cash-offer process, see sell your house.
Relocation FAQ
The questions transferees ask before signing
I have an employer relocation buyout offer — should I use yours or theirs?
Take the employer offer if the math works. A standard corporate relocation buyout from a third-party relocation management company (Cartus, BGRS, Sirva, Weichert, and similar RMCs) is typically structured as a guaranteed buyout at roughly 95 percent of the average of three independent appraisals. On most Texas homes in normal condition, a 95 percent FMV guaranteed buyout will beat what we can pay — and it should. We are not trying to compete with that program, and we will tell you the same thing on the phone. Where we become the right answer is when the employer offer has conditions you cannot accept — a deadline that does not match your real move date, a requirement to stay employed for X months after the buyout, a forced appraiser the seller does not trust, or a property condition issue (deferred maintenance, foundation, prior insurance claims) that disqualifies the home from the program entirely. In those cases we are the backup plan, and the conversation is worth having. Read the program documents first and call us with the specifics.
How fast can you close once I sign?
Nine days from a signed contract is normal once title is clear. Faster is possible on clean title. The constraint is rarely us; it is whether the title company can run a clean lien search and coordinate payoff with your existing mortgage servicer in the window you need. If your situation has any complexity (out-of-state owner, divorce decree, recent refinance, inherited title, second mortgage) we will tell you the realistic timeline on the first call rather than promising nine days and missing it.
What if my move date keeps slipping?
Relocation timelines slip — corporate report dates get pushed, PCS orders get amended, school registration windows move, the new house at the destination falls out of escrow. We build flexibility into the closing date during the contract phase rather than locking you to a date you might miss. If the date shifts, we re-schedule the close. If it shifts dramatically, we re-look at the offer because the carrying-cost math changes for both sides. The point is we work the timeline with you instead of penalizing you for the relocation reality.
Can I rent the house back from you for a month?
Sometimes — and it is a useful tool for relocators specifically. The structure is a short-term lease where we close on your timeline (often early, to stop the carrying-cost burn) and you lease the house back from us for an agreed period at a market or sub-market monthly rate while you finish packing, wait for the new house to close, or coordinate movers. This is not our default and not every property is the right fit for it, but on relocation deals it comes up frequently and we have done it. Ask during the offer conversation and we will price the rent-back option alongside the standard offer.
What about my Texas property tax exemption transfer?
If you have a homestead exemption on the Texas house you are selling, that exemption applies to that specific property — it does not "follow" you to your next home, even if the next home is also in Texas. You will need to apply for a new homestead exemption on whatever property becomes your next primary residence in Texas (the application is filed with the county appraisal district where the new home sits). If you are relocating out of Texas entirely, the exemption simply ends when you no longer occupy the home as your primary residence — you do not need to take any action to "cancel" it, though the county appraisal district will eventually update the record. This is general background, not tax advice; if your situation is unusual (transfer between spouses, over-65 exemption, disabled veteran exemption, or a property in protest) talk to your county appraisal district or a Texas property tax consultant. We do not give tax advice and our offer is not contingent on the exemption status.
Do you handle military PCS sellers?
Yes. PCS orders typically come with a 30 to 60 day reporting window, sometimes less, and the relocation has structural differences from a corporate transfer — the SCRA, the DLA, the move-it-yourself reimbursement, the chance of orders being amended at the last minute. We have worked with active-duty sellers around Sheppard AFB (Wichita Falls), Sheppard-adjacent housing markets, Fort Cavazos (Killeen), and the San Antonio bases. Our process accommodates the PCS timeline, and we can close around deployment or training schedules when the sponsor is the one on title. A dedicated PCS guide is in production. In the meantime, call and we will walk through your specific orders and timeline.
What if I am leaving Texas entirely — do you handle out-of-state closings?
Yes. The vast majority of our relocation sellers do not live in Texas by the time we close. The title company coordinates a mobile notary in your new city; you sign the deed and any related closing documents at your new kitchen table, your new office, or wherever is convenient. Funds wire to your bank account on the day of funding regardless of which state you are in. You do not need to fly back to Texas. The closing happens around your move, not in addition to it.
What about losing my homestead exemption when I move?
The Texas homestead exemption is tied to the property being your principal residence. When you stop occupying the home as your primary residence — which happens by definition when you relocate and the home is sold — the exemption ends with respect to you. The new owner (us, then eventually a retail buyer) takes the property without your exemption applying. For the year of sale, the property tax bill will be prorated at closing based on what is owed for the days you owned the home versus the days we owned it. The title company handles the proration; you do not separately settle the tax with the county. If you are losing the over-65 or disabled-veteran exemption and the question is whether to transfer the cap to a new Texas home, that is a county-appraisal-district question — we do not give tax advice and we will not pretend the answer is simple.
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