A fourplex is not a big house. The buyer pool is investors, the price runs on the rent roll, and tenants make showings miserable. How a fast cash sale on a 2 to 4 unit building actually works.
By InTym Properties
A duplex is not a big house, and selling one fast is not the same job as selling a house fast. The buyers are different, the math is different, and the thing that makes a single-family listing work, an owner-occupant falling in love with the kitchen, does not exist. Nobody falls in love with a fourplex. They fall in like with the rent roll.
That changes who you're selling to and how the price gets set. Here's how a fast cash sale on a 2 to 4 unit property actually works, what the building is worth to an investor buyer, and what the timeline really looks like.
Three things separate a duplex, triplex, or fourplex sale from a single-family sale.
The buyer pool is investors. The person who buys a house is usually the person who will live in it. The person who buys a fourplex almost never is. Owner-occupant buyers for multi-unit buildings exist, the "house hacker" who lives in one unit and rents the rest, but they're a thin slice of the market. Most of your pool is landlords and investors, and investors don't pay for feelings. They pay for income.
Financing splits at five units. A building with four units or fewer can be bought with a residential loan, including FHA financing if the buyer lives in a unit. At five units it becomes a commercial loan: different underwriting, bigger down payments, the building appraised on its income rather than on comparable houses. That line matters less for a 2 to 4 unit seller than for the apartment-building owner (more on that in the selling an apartment building post), but it still shrinks your financed-buyer pool, because most investors don't occupy and don't qualify for the owner-occupant programs anyway.
Tenants complicate everything. A vacant house photographs well and shows on an hour's notice. A fourplex is four households: four schedules, four sets of opinions about strangers walking through, four units that may or may not be tidy. Leases bind the buyer in both Florida and Idaho, deposits transfer at closing, and every showing happens inside someone's home. The post on selling a rental with tenants covers the mechanics; the short version is that occupied buildings sell worse on the MLS even when the tenancy itself is the asset.
Forget what the house down the street sold for. A multifamily building is priced off its income, and the math has three layers.
The rent roll. What each unit actually collects each month, and how that compares to market rent. A fourplex collecting $1,100 a unit in a $1,400 market is worth less today but carries obvious upside. Long-term landlords who haven't raised rents in years are most of the sellers in this category, and the gap gets priced, not ignored.
Net operating income. Gross rent minus the expenses that keep the building running: property taxes, insurance, maintenance, management if any, utilities the owner pays, and a vacancy allowance. Your mortgage payment is not in that list. NOI is what the building earns, not what it costs you personally.
The cap rate, minus the jargon. The cap rate is just NOI divided by price, expressed as a percent. If a building nets $24,000 a year and sells for $400,000, that's a 6 cap. Investors run the formula backward: they decide what return they need, then divide your NOI by it to get a price. Price per unit, that same $400,000 divided by four doors, or $100,000 a door, is the sanity check that keeps the income math honest.
InTym Properties underwrites exactly this way and shows every line of it. The cash offer math post walks through the same show-your-work approach on houses.
A direct cash sale trades the listing process for a number:
The trade is real. A clean fourplex with market rents, patiently marketed, can net more on the MLS than a wholesale cash offer pays. If your building is clean and your timeline is flexible, list it. InTym Properties will tell you that on the phone, the same way the Opendoor comparison tells house sellers when the iBuyer legitimately wins. And if nothing is wrong with the building and you're simply done being a landlord, the tired landlord exit post covers that decision directly.
Written offer usually within 48 hours of the walkthrough. From there: a title search, estoppel letters or deposit accounting for the tenants, and a closing through a licensed title company. Two to four weeks is typical. Faster is possible when the title is clean and the paperwork is ready. Slower than a house, because there are more occupants to document. Faster than listing, because there's no market time at all.
Here's the part most cash buyers leave vague, so here it is plainly. On multifamily deals, InTym Properties either closes as principal with its own funds or assigns the contract to a vetted end buyer from its investor list. If your deal is an assignment, that's disclosed in writing before you sign, not discovered in the fine print, and your price and terms are the same either way. The cash buyer vs. wholesaler post explains why the distinction matters and what contract language exposes a buyer who won't tell you which they are.
A duplex, triplex, or fourplex sells on its rent roll, not its curb appeal. The buyer pool is investors, the price is income math, and tenants make the retail route slower and uglier than a vacant house. A direct cash sale skips the showings, the financing, and the lease-out wait, and it trades away the top-of-market exposure a patient listing can capture. Which trade makes sense depends on the building, the tenants, and your deadline. If that deadline is a 1031 exchange clock, the post on selling a 1031 exchange property fast covers the 45-day identification and 180-day closing windows.
Own a duplex, triplex, or fourplex in Broward County or south Idaho? Call or text (650) 540-1854. InTym Properties buys 2 to 4 unit buildings occupied, under-rented, or needing work, with a written offer usually within 48 hours.
The buyer pool is smaller and it prices differently. Houses sell to owner-occupants on emotion and comparable sales; 2 to 4 unit buildings sell mostly to investors on income. Buyers who live in one unit and rent the rest exist but are a thin slice of the market, so the rent roll and condition matter more than staging or curb appeal.
Off the income. Investors start with the actual rent roll, subtract operating expenses like taxes, insurance, maintenance, and a vacancy allowance to get net operating income, then divide NOI by the return they need, the cap rate, to back into a price. Price per unit is the sanity check. The mortgage payment is not part of the math; NOI is what the building earns.
Yes. In both Florida and Idaho a fixed-term lease survives the sale and binds the buyer, month-to-month tenancies transfer too, and security deposits move to the new owner at closing. An investor buyer often prefers the building occupied, so there is no need to wait out leases or evict anyone first.
Both, and it is disclosed before you sign. On some multifamily deals InTym Properties closes as principal with its own funds; on others the contract is assigned to a vetted end buyer from its investor list. The structure is stated in writing up front, and the price and terms stay the same either way.
Written offer usually within 48 hours, signed by InTym Properties, every number shown. No repairs, no fees, no obligation.
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