We Buy Houses in Marin County

Marin's problem for sellers: a high-price county with a thin market for fixers

In most of the Bay Area, a house that needs work still draws a crowd. Contractors, flippers, and small investors compete for anything priced below the county median. Marin doesn't work that way. Prices are high enough that most buyers are stretching to qualify, and a stretching buyer needs a house their lender likes. A fixer in Vallejo gets a bidding war. A fixer in Larkspur gets a handful of lowballs and a lot of silence.

That's the gap where cash home buyers earn their keep. We're not competing with owner-occupants who need financing. We're pricing the work, the holding time, and the resale, and we can say yes to properties the traditional market quietly passes on.

Hillside lots, retaining walls, and drainage

A big share of southern Marin is built on slopes. Mill Valley canyons, the Sausalito hills, ridge lots in Corte Madera, the hillsides above San Rafael. These homes come with retaining walls, sub-area drainage, and decks hanging over grade, and all of it ages. When a listing hits escrow, the buyer's lender sees the inspection report, asks for a geotechnical review, and the deal stalls or dies. The seller relists, discloses everything the last inspection found, and starts over with a smaller buyer pool.

Selling to us skips that loop. No appraisal, no lender, no committee deciding whether a 60-year-old retaining wall is acceptable collateral. We look at the slope, price the work, and close. Hillside issues move the number; they don't stop the sale.

West Marin: septic systems, wells, and lenders who want no part of either

Point Reyes Station, Inverness, Bolinas, Stinson Beach, Woodacre, Lagunitas, Nicasio. Much of West Marin has no sewer service, so homes run on septic systems, and many are on private wells or small mutual water systems. A failed septic inspection can stall a traditional sale for months while the county reviews a replacement design. Well output and water-quality tests add another round of contingencies.

We buy homes on septic and well as-is. If the leach field is at the end of its life, that's a line item in our offer, not a reason the escrow collapses.

Estates and houses held for forty years

Marin owners stay put, partly because the property tax basis on a home bought decades ago is too good to give up. So a large share of our Marin calls are estates: a parent bought the house in the 1970s, lived there for the rest of their life, and the heirs are now scattered across three states looking at a property with a lot of equity and a long list of deferred maintenance.

We do these regularly. We coordinate with the probate attorney, work around belongings still in the house, and handle everything remotely if no heir is local. See inherited property and selling from out of state for how that works, and probate sales if the estate hasn't cleared yet.

The small towns count too

We keep a dedicated page for San Rafael, but we buy houses across the whole county. Mill Valley, Novato, Fairfax, San Anselmo, Corte Madera, Larkspur, Tiburon, Sausalito, and the unincorporated pockets in between. No town in Marin is too small or too far out for us to make the drive.

Marin cash sale vs. listing: when each path makes sense

List with an agent if the house is in good shape on a flat lot with standard utilities and you have 60 to 90 days. Marin agents are strong, the county's buyer pool pays a premium for turnkey, and a clean Tiburon or Mill Valley listing will beat our number by a wide margin. We'll tell you that on the phone.

Sell to us if the property has hillside, drainage, or geotech questions a lender will choke on; if it's on septic or well and you don't want to fund the fixes; if you're settling an estate with heirs in three time zones; or if the house simply needs more work than you want to pay for before selling.

What our Marin offer looks like

One walkthrough, and you get a written cash offer the same day. No fees, no commissions, no repair credits negotiated after inspection. We pay closing costs and close in as little as 7 days, or months out if you need time. The number reflects what the house actually needs, and we'll walk you through how we got to it.

If another investor has given you a written offer on a Marin property, send it over. We'll either beat it or tell you to take it.