I'm going to tell you something I haven't told most people in my life. In the fall of 2025, my wife Tanya and I were three months behind on our mortgage. We had a foreclosure warning letter sitting on the kitchen counter, and I couldn't look at it. I'd pick it up, read the first line, and put it back down. Like if I didn't finish reading it, it wasn't real.
We sold our house fast in Raleigh to a cash buyer nine days later. And I'm writing this because if you're in the same spot we were — sitting at your kitchen table at midnight, Googling things you never thought you'd Google. I want you to know how it actually went. Not the sales pitch version. The real one.
How We Got Three Months Behind
I worked in tech for eleven years. Good salary. We bought our house in 2019, a three-bedroom ranch near the Southeast Raleigh and Garner border. Built in 1978. Nothing fancy, but it was ours. Tanya and I painted every room ourselves that first weekend. The kids picked their bedroom colors. It felt permanent.
Then in August 2025, my company did a round of layoffs. I wasn't worried at first. I had twelve years of experience and good reviews. I figured I'd have something new in a few weeks.
Weeks turned into two months. The severance ran out faster than I expected. Tanya works part-time at a dental office, but that covers groceries and the car payment, not a $1,640 mortgage. We burned through savings. I cashed out a small retirement account. We skipped September's payment thinking I'd land something by October.
October came. Nothing. November. Nothing. By December we were three months behind and the letter showed up.
The Part I Don't Like Talking About
Here's the thing nobody tells you about falling behind on your house. The money part is bad. But the shame is worse.
I didn't tell my parents. Tanya's sister asked why we weren't hosting Christmas that year and Tanya made up some story about the kitchen being renovated. The kitchen wasn't being renovated. The kitchen had the same cabinets from 1986 and a faucet that dripped. We just couldn't afford to feed twelve people.
I stopped answering the phone because I was afraid it was the bank. I stopped checking the mail. Tanya was the one who finally said it out loud: "Marcus, we need to talk about selling the house."
I didn't want to hear it. That house was the one thing I could point to and say I did something right. Selling it felt like admitting I failed.
Finding Cinch at 11pm on a Tuesday
Tanya is more practical than I am. Always has been. While I was busy not opening mail, she was on her phone researching options. She told me later she searched "sell house fast Raleigh" and "cash home buyer near me" and went down a rabbit hole.
Most of the "we buy houses" sites looked sketchy to her. The ones with the handwritten signs you see stapled to telephone poles. She almost closed her laptop. But she found Cinch Home Buyers and something about the site felt different. She said it didn't feel like someone was trying to trick her. It felt like someone who actually understood what it's like to need to sell fast in North Carolina.
She filled out the form at 11pm. She didn't tell me until the next morning.
When Ryan Showed Up
I was skeptical. I want to be honest about that. I'd heard stories about cash buyers lowballing people or tacking on hidden fees. Tanya had to talk me into even being there when the guy came.
Ryan showed up the next afternoon. He walked through the house. He saw what I saw: the roof that needed replacing and the kitchen that was older than our marriage. He didn't flinch at any of it. He didn't make a face at the water stain on the ceiling in the hallway.
He asked us questions, but not the kind I expected. He didn't ask why we were selling. He asked what our timeline was. What we needed to walk away with. Whether we had somewhere to go.
I remember standing in the backyard while Tanya walked him through the bedrooms, and I almost called the whole thing off. It felt like giving up. But then I thought about that letter on the counter, and I knew that not doing anything was the real failure.
The Offer and the Math
Ryan came back to us with an offer of $198,000. As-is. No repairs. No cleaning. No open houses. No strangers walking through our kids' bedrooms.
We owed $162,000 on the mortgage. After the payoff and closing costs, we'd walk away with roughly $31,000.
Now look, I know what you might be thinking. If we'd listed it with a Realtor, maybe we'd have gotten $230K or $240K. Maybe. But here's the math Tanya and I sat down and did that night:
We were three months behind. That's $4,920 in missed payments. The bank was already moving. A traditional sale takes 60 to 90 days on a good day, and our house needed a new roof and a kitchen from this century. We'd need repairs to pass inspection. We'd need to keep paying the mortgage during all of that. We'd owe the Realtor 5-6% commission.
By the time you factor in all of it, the cash offer versus listing math was basically a wash. And the cash offer came with something the listing couldn't give us: certainty. We'd close in 9 days. We'd know exactly what we were getting. No inspections falling through, no buyers backing out.
We said yes.
Nine Days Later
I don't know what I expected closing to feel like. Sad, maybe. Heavy. But honestly? It was just... quiet. We signed papers in a title office off Capital Boulevard. Tanya held my hand under the table, which she hasn't done in public since we were dating.
The wire hit our account two days later. $31,400 and change.
I sat in the car in the parking lot of our bank and stared at the balance on my phone. And I cried. Not because we lost the house. Because the weight was gone. Three months of not sleeping and not being able to look my wife in the eye — that was over.
Where We Are Now
We moved into an apartment in Garner. Two bedrooms. The kids share a room and they complain about it, which is fair. But the rent is $1,200 a month and we can actually pay it.
I got a new job in February. Different company, similar role, slightly less money but steady. We're rebuilding. The $31K gave us the breathing room to do that without panic. We paid off the credit cards we'd been leaning on. We put three months of rent in savings so we'd never feel that kind of scared again.
The house wasn't our identity. I thought it was, but it wasn't. It was a building with a leaky roof and a kitchen from the Reagan era. Our family is our identity. And our family is fine.
What I'd Tell You If You're Where We Were
Don't wait as long as I did. I wasted three months being afraid and ashamed when I could have been solving the problem. The foreclosure process in North Carolina moves faster than you think, and every week you wait, your options get smaller.
And if you're worried about cash buyers being a scam, I get it. I was too. But Cinch was straight with us from the first phone call. No pressure. No games. Just a number and a timeline. If the number doesn't work for you, you walk away. Nobody's holding a gun to your head.
We sold our house fast in Raleigh to a cash buyer and walked away with money in our pocket and our dignity intact. I didn't think both of those things were possible at the same time. They are.