Ask your employer this before you sign a listing agreement, not after: does the package include a company or third-party purchase of the house - a guaranteed buyout - and if it does, what has to happen first for it to stay available? The order matters. Buyout and amended-value programs are built around a specific sequence of offers and approvals, and the fastest way to fall out of one is to market the house on your own terms, take an offer directly, and tell the relocation coordinator afterwards.
The answers are also worth real money in tax. Since P.L. 119-21, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, IRS Publication 15-B for 2026 states that the law permanently eliminates the exclusion for qualified moving expense reimbursements from an employee's income, leaving only active-duty Armed Forces members moving on a permanent change of station and certain intelligence community employees. So relocation help is generally taxable wages now, and whether the employer grosses it up is a question with a number attached.
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If the answer from HR is that there is no buyout, a firm closing date you control is often worth more than the last few percent of price when the new job has already started. No obligation, no fee, and we will tell you honestly if listing would net you more. Get a cash offer on your Ohio home.
What a Guaranteed Buyout Actually Is
Employers use different names, so ask about the mechanism rather than the label. In a guaranteed buyout, the employer or a relocation management company commits to purchase your home at a determined value if you do not sell it yourself within a marketing window. In a buyer-value or amended-value program, the same purchase happens at a price amended upward to match a bona fide outside offer that the relocation company then takes over. In a reimbursement-only package, nobody buys anything: you sell in the open market and the employer pays some of your costs.
Those are three genuinely different products. Only the first two put a floor under you. The third is a rebate on a sale you still have to make, on a timeline your employer does not control - which is why it matters whether the words in your offer letter are "we will purchase" or "we will reimburse."
Why the Sequence Is the Whole Game
These programs work by routing the sale through the relocation company on a defined path: appraisals or a valuation, an offer to you with a deadline, a marketing period during which you may find your own buyer, and then a purchase if you do not. Step out of that order and the benefit can evaporate - take a buyer's offer directly and sign a purchase contract in your own name and there may no longer be a house for the program to buy.
So the questions to put in writing before you list are simple ones. When does the offer become available and when does it expire? Is there a required marketing period first? Does the listing agreement have to contain language letting the relocation company take the house or end the listing? Who has to see an outside offer, and in what order? Written answers from HR beat a coordinator's recollection three weeks later.
The IRS Ruling Your Program Is Built Around
Relocation home purchase programs are not improvised; they are drafted against Revenue Ruling 2005-74, which analysed three fact patterns and asked, in each, whether there were two sales or one. In its first two situations the relocation company buys the home at value - including where the employee may amend that value by producing a higher outside offer - and the employee receives no part of the gain on the resale. The ruling holds those are two separate sales: employee to employer, then employer to the ultimate buyer.
Its third situation looks similar and lands differently. There, the employee keeps approval rights over offers and negotiations and the higher price is contingent on the relocation company actually closing with the third-party buyer. The ruling treats that as one sale by the employee to the third-party buyer, facilitated by the employer. The analysis turns on who holds the benefits and burdens of ownership between the two closings.
You do not need to run that analysis yourself, and this post is not the place to conclude what it means for your return. What it does mean practically: the approval rights you keep, and the negotiating you do directly with a buyer, are exactly the facts the IRS looked at. Ask your employer which situation in Rev. Rul. 2005-74 their program is designed to match, and hand the answer, with the ruling, to your CPA.
How the Offer Number Gets Made
The purchase price in a buyout is usually set by appraisal rather than by a listing agent's opinion, and the details of that process are worth asking about because they are where the number moves. How many appraisers, and who selects them? Are you allowed to reject the panel, or the result? Is the offer the average of the appraisals, the highest, or something after a deduction? What happens if the appraisals come in far apart?
Ask too what comes out of the price at closing - carrying costs during the marketing window, repairs identified by an inspection, a home-condition holdback. A buyout offer with several deductions can land below a slower open-market sale, and you cannot compare the two until you have both numbers on paper.
Tax: What Is Wages Now, and What Is Still Yours
Start from the new baseline. IRS Publication 15-B for use in 2026 states that P.L. 119-21 permanently eliminates the exclusion for qualified moving expense reimbursements, and keeps it only for a member of the U.S. Armed Forces on active duty moving because of a permanent change of station under military order, and for an employee or new appointee of the intelligence community moving under a change of assignment requiring relocation. IRS Topic 455 says the same. For everyone else, employer-paid moving help is generally taxable compensation - so ask whether your package is grossed up, and at what assumed rate.
What the change does not touch is the exclusion on the sale of your home. IRS Topic 701 keeps the familiar rule: up to $250,000 of gain excluded, or $500,000 on a joint return, if you owned the home at least twenty-four months of the five years before the sale and used it as a residence for at least twenty-four months of those five years - and you are not eligible if you excluded gain from another home sale in the two years before this one.
If you fall short of two years because the job moved you, look at the partial exclusion before assuming you owe on everything. Publication 523's work-related safe harbor asks whether you took or were transferred to a job in a location at least fifty miles farther from the home than your old work location. A partial exclusion is often the difference between a taxable relocation and a clean one, and it is a conversation to have with a CPA before closing, not in April.
What Ohio Requires Regardless of Who Buys
A relocation company on the other side of the contract does not change your Ohio obligations. The residential property disclosure form under ORC 5302.30 still has to be completed and delivered: the exemptions in division (B)(2) run from court-ordered transfers and fiduciary transfers to newly constructed property never inhabited, and none of them is a relocation program or a corporate buyer. Expect the relocation company's own addendum to sit on top of the standard Ohio contract too, and read which of its terms replace the ones you would otherwise rely on.
One more Ohio detail for a seller who has already moved: ORC 5747.20(B)(2)(a) allocates capital gains from the sale of real property to Ohio when the property is physically located here, which is how a new resident of another state still ends up with an Ohio filing question on the Ohio house. That is a CPA question, and it is cheaper asked in advance.
If the Answer Is "No Buyout"
Plenty of packages are reimbursement-only, and plenty of moves are not employer-sponsored at all. Then you are choosing between listing the house from a distance and selling it outright, and the honest comparison is not price against price. A listed sale usually brings more gross dollars. A cash sale brings a closing date you can pick, no repair negotiation, and no second mortgage payment for the months the house sits.
Run both. Get a listing agent's realistic net after commission, concessions, repairs and carrying costs to a likely closing date, and get a cash number against the same date, then decide with the two figures side by side. If the house will be empty in the meantime, read up on selling a vacant Ohio house first - insurance and security both change once nobody lives there.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a guaranteed buyout in a relocation package?
It is a commitment by the employer or a relocation management company to purchase your home at a determined value if you do not sell it yourself within a marketing window. It is different from an amended-value program, where the purchase price is raised to match an outside offer, and from a reimbursement-only package, where nobody buys the house at all.
Should I list my house before I know whether I have a buyout?
Ask first. Buyout and amended-value programs run on a defined sequence of valuations, offers and approvals, and signing a purchase contract with a buyer in your own name can leave nothing for the program to buy. Get written answers on deadlines, required marketing periods and listing-agreement language before you sign anything.
Are employer-paid relocation benefits taxable in 2026?
Generally yes. IRS Publication 15-B for 2026 states that P.L. 119-21 permanently eliminates the exclusion for qualified moving expense reimbursements, leaving it only for active-duty Armed Forces members moving on a permanent change of station and certain intelligence community employees. Ask your employer whether the package is grossed up for the tax.
Does selling to a relocation company still count for the home sale exclusion?
The exclusion in IRS Topic 701 turns on your ownership and use of the home, not on who buys it. What varies is whether the arrangement is one sale or two: Rev. Rul. 2005-74 treats some relocation programs as a sale to the employer and a separate resale, and others as one sale to the ultimate buyer. Take the program documents to a CPA.
Do I still have to give the Ohio disclosure form to a relocation company?
Almost certainly yes. ORC 5302.30 requires the residential property disclosure form and its division (B)(2) exemptions cover things like court-ordered transfers, fiduciary transfers and never-inhabited new construction - not relocation programs or corporate buyers. Ask an Ohio attorney whether any exemption fits your particular transfer.
Related Reading
This article is general information about Ohio real estate and is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Foreclosure, probate, bankruptcy and title matters are fact-specific - consult a licensed Ohio attorney or CPA about your situation. We are a licensed Ohio real estate brokerage, not a law firm.