Straight answers, including the awkward ones.

We make a firm offer — no conditions, no contingency. If you accept it, the house is sold. The deposit is at your lawyer's office the next business day.

Cash-buyer companies commonly write a ten-day contingency into the offer. That means they can walk away inside those ten days and lose nothing, while your house has been off the market the whole time. Ask any buyer for the offer in writing and read what it says about conditions before you sign — ours included.

Most of the we-buy-houses advertising in Calgary is a call centre or a lead broker — you fill in a form, your details get sold on, and several different people ring you. Some of them never buy anything themselves, and most of the time their contract is subject to 10–15 days of conditions — which means they can back out of the contract at any time during that conditional period.

At Direct Home Buyer, the offer we send you is a firm offer, without any conditions — which means you have a firm sale the moment you accept it.

Often, yes — and we'll say so plainly. If your house is in good condition and you're not in a hurry, listing it on the market will usually leave you with more money, even after commission. We're the better option when a house needs real work, when a lender won't finance it in its current condition, when you can't or don't want to pay for repairs up front, or when certainty and speed matter more than the last few thousand dollars. Here's the honest comparison, with the numbers.

Yes — and that's what this is. Selling to us is a private house sale between the two of us. No listing on MLS, no sign on the lawn, no showings, no commission out of your proceeds. The paperwork still goes through lawyers, and you should use your own.

Detached houses, semi-detached, townhouses and condos in Calgary and the surrounding towns. We buy homes that need work — original kitchens, old roofs, Poly-B plumbing, aluminum wiring, foundation movement, fire or water damage, former grow-ops, tenanted rentals. We don't buy every property, and if yours isn't a fit we'll tell you quickly rather than waste your time.

Nothing. Leave the furniture, the boxes in the basement, whatever you don't want. We handle the clean-out. No repairs, no painting, no staging, no showings, no strangers walking through your house.

It's usually the reason to call rather than a reason not to. A house a lender won't finance is a house that can't sell on the open market at anything like its normal price. We're buying it to renovate, so the damage changes the number, not the answer. Tell us what happened and whether it was an insurance claim, and let us see it before you spend anything on repairs.

As little as five to seven days where the title is clean and your lawyer can move that quickly. Two to three weeks is more usual, because a mortgage payout statement and the tax certificate take the time they take. And we can go slower — some people want three months to sort out a move. You pick the date, not us.

And if you're behind on payments and racing a foreclosure date, say so. Selling a house fast before foreclosure is mostly about working backwards from that date — so that's how we plan the closing.

Yes, you should have one, and yes — use whoever you like. We close through a Calgary law firm and we're happy to give you their details, but you're never obliged to use them.

We pay the legal fee for the sale either way — yours as well as ours. If your lawyer's account for the conveyancing comes to more than a normal Calgary rate, or you ask them to do work beyond the sale itself, we agree that part in writing beforehand.

Usually yes. The two things that matter are who has legal authority to sell and whether probate has been granted. If you're the executor and the grant has come through, it's a normal sale. If probate is still in progress we can agree terms and set closing for after the grant — we'll wait. If the house is jointly owned and passed by survivorship, probate may not be needed at all. Where several beneficiaries have to agree, everyone signs, and we'd rather they all had the offer in front of them from the start. More on selling a parent's or a relative's house.

Yes. Alberta probate usually takes several months to reach a grant, and we can work around that timeline. We'll coordinate directly with the estate lawyer so you're not stuck in the middle relaying messages.

This is common and it's straightforward. We can do a walkthrough by video call with any siblings on the line, and the whole transaction can be completed remotely through the lawyers. There's a page here written specifically for this situation.

No. Leave whatever you don't want — furniture, the contents of the basement, the garage, the lot. Take the things that mean something and shut the door on the rest. Clearing a house out is the single most common reason people put this off for a year, and it is the part we're actually paid to deal with.

Yes, and you don't have to evict anyone first. We can buy a rental with the tenant in place — we take on the tenancy as it stands, and their lease carries over to us by law. That is usually better for everyone: you avoid the notice periods and the Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service, and the tenant isn't put out on the street so a sale can happen. Send us the lease and the rent roll along with the address.

We can buy it, yes. Both people on title have to sign, and if there's a court order or a separation agreement setting out how the proceeds are split, your lawyers handle that at closing — that part is between you, your lawyer and the other side, not us. What we can do is give you one written number so there's a real figure to talk about instead of an estimate, and take showings out of the equation entirely.

It doesn't stop a sale. The balance gets paid out through the lawyers at closing, the same way an ordinary mortgage would. What matters is knowing the payout figure early so there are no surprises — we'll help you get it.

Often, yes. A large special assessment is exactly the kind of thing that makes a unit hard to sell on the open market, and it's a situation we understand. Send us the board's documentation along with the address.