The house handoff: the buyer value option may help speed relocated employees on their way--but beware of tax liabilities.

Last year when a merger meant that The Sports Authority needed to move some 125 employees from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to the Denver area, the company went looking for ways to make the move as enticing as possible. "We really wanted people to move, and we wanted everything to go as smoothly as

To that end, the company offered its employees a buyer value option (BVO) home buyout--a program that enabled employees to sell their Florida homes to a third-party relocation company, which would, in turn, sell the home to a buyer that the employee had located.

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Employees were able to wash their hands of many of the final details involved in home sales and to focus their efforts on finding and moving to new housing in Colorado. In addition, The Sports Authority was relieved of a huge administrative burden.

With BVO, the employer commissions a relocation company to juggle the packers, movers and other details of relocation, which include purchasing the employee's home and handling the remaining details, such as closing costs, not to mention the closing itself, in the second sale to the new homeowner. After a fair market value is established and an employee locates a credible buyer, the employee then may sell the home to a third-party relocation company for the price (the "buyer value") established by the outside offer.

"It worked wonderfully, and our employees did not have to worry as much about selling their homes," says Hinton. "The BVO really let our associates find the new community they wanted to live in and get back to work."

Of the 125 individuals who made the move--assisted by RE/MAX Relocation--only one home did not sell.

How It Began

The evolution of the BVO began during the 1980s, when companies began to seek out third parties to buy employees' homes through "amended value" home buyout programs.

In the case of amended value corporate buyouts, a third party is charged with getting appraisals and inspections taken care of, making an offer to purchase at the value established by the appraisals and giving the seller a period of time--normally 60 days--to locate a buyer willing to pay more than the appraised amount.

But by the late 1990s, the real estate market was hot enough that some employers were willing to agree that if a buyer simply showed up and made an offer, that offer alone was a determinant of fair market value. Hence the term "buyer value option."