Cash Buyer vs. iBuyer (Opendoor / Offerpad)

People often lump local direct buyers and iBuyers together, but they're different businesses with very different models. If you're choosing between them, here's how they actually compare, and where each one fits.

What an iBuyer is

These are large technology companies, like the national instant-offer platforms, that use algorithms to make quick offers on homes. They typically want houses in good, recent condition, in standardized suburban tracts, and they charge service fees that can run 5 percent or more, sometimes with repair deductions after their inspection. They're essentially a faster version of a traditional sale for a move-in-ready home.

What we are

We're a local, family-owned cash buyer, in business in the Bay Area since 2009. We buy directly, with our own funds, and we specialize in the homes those platforms reject: older houses, homes that need work, properties tangled in probate, liens, or foundation issues. We're not an agent and charge no commission.

How to choose

• iBuyer: newer, move-in-ready home in a standard neighborhood, willing to pay the service fee for convenience.
• Local buyer (us): home needs work, has a complication, or you want to deal with real local people who pick up the phone, walk the property, and give you a number that won't get cut after an inspection.

A real person here will give you a fair offer and an honest comparison. Call or text 415-800-1415, or fill out the short form below. A real local person answers, usually within the hour during the day, and you'll have a cash offer within 24 hours.

How the app-based model actually plays out

The first number an algorithmic buyer shows you may not be the final one. The initial figure comes from a pricing model working off public records and comparable sales. No human has seen your house yet. After you accept, the company sends an inspector, and any findings can come back as repair deductions subtracted from the price. Then the service fee comes off the top, and for many sellers that fee lands in the same territory as a traditional agent commission. None of this makes the model dishonest. The companies disclose it. It just means the headline number and the number that actually reaches you at closing can be two different figures, and you learn the second one only after the inspection, deep enough into the process that backing out feels expensive.

We work in the opposite order. We walk the property in person before we give you a number, so the roof, the foundation, and the 1970s kitchen are already priced in. The number does not get cut later. There is no service fee and no commission. What we agree on is what you get, minus only the standard escrow and title items that every California sale includes.

Why the Bay Area is a hard map for algorithmic buyers

Pricing algorithms work best where houses resemble each other: big tracts of similar homes built around the same time, easy to value from a spreadsheet. That describes large parts of Phoenix or Dallas. It does not describe much of the Bay Area, where a 1912 Edwardian sits next to a 1985 remodel next to a hillside lot with a retaining wall and a view. The national platforms have historically operated in only limited slices of this market, and even where they do, unusual properties tend to get declined or priced very conservatively because the algorithm cannot find clean comparables.

Condition is the other cutoff. The app-based model wants homes that need little to no work, because these companies resell at scale and repairs wreck their margins. A house with foundation problems, a failing roof, or decades of deferred maintenance usually gets an automatic no. Those are exactly the houses we buy, with our own funds, in whatever condition they sit in today.

When the app is genuinely the better call

If you own a newer, move-in-ready home in a standard suburban neighborhood the platforms actually serve, and you like the idea of handling the whole sale from your phone, an iBuyer can be a reasonable choice. Get their offer and get ours. They cost nothing to request and you can compare real numbers instead of guessing. And if your home is updated and would draw competing bids on the open market, a traditional listing may net you more than either of us. We will tell you that on the first phone call if we think it is true, because a seller we were straight with sends us their neighbor five years later.

Other situations we help with

• Inherited Property
• Probate Sale
• Avoiding Foreclosure
• Any Condition
• Tired Landlord
• Divorce Sale

See every situation we buy in →