So you think
I’m one of them.
Let me show you
I’m not.
- “You’re just another investor.”
- “You’re trying to rip me off.”
- “You’re the guy trying to take money out of my pocket.”
Fair. Most of the calls you get are exactly that, and I am not going to out-talk you on the phone.
So here is the same house, run through their deal and through mine, in pictures. Move one slider and watch which side keeps your money. It takes two minutes, it needs nothing from you, and at the end you will know exactly which one I am.
It is not about who offers you more. It is about who gets paid when your house turns out to be worth more.
Their pay goes up when yours goes down, because it is the same pot. Mine is a fixed number that cannot move whatever your home sells for. Everything below is just that one sentence, drawn.
Their pay and your equity are the same pot of money.
They are paid the gap between what you take and what your home is really worth. The only way their end goes up is if yours comes down, so every question you never asked is money.
Mine is a separate number that cannot move.
One fixed dollar amount, agreed in writing before anything happens. Your side can climb as far as investors push it. Mine is the same figure at the top as it was at the bottom.
Watch where your money goes.
Pick a price, then drag the competition. One home, one sale price, split two ways. Nothing here is a quote, and nothing here flatters me: with nobody competing, the two deals land close together. Then look at what happens next.
Same home, same sale price. All of it is the part of your equity the other deal keeps.
Every dollar of the $540,000
same bar, same sale price, both sidesYour share of your own home
$75,000 of the price your home sold for never reaches you, and never appears on a line you could point at.
$30,000 is my fee, on the agreement, before you sign. The rest of it is yours.
What reaches you
as investors bid higherAxis starts at $455,000, not at zero, so the two lines can be told apart.
What the middleman keeps
from zero, same axis for bothOne line climbs with your home's price. The other is a flat line, and that is the entire pitch.
Illustration only. The typical cash buyer side shows what happens when a buyer locks in a lower price and keeps the resale spread, a common industry practice, and is not a quote from any specific company. Both sides are drawn against the same sale price. Any mortgage payoff comes off both sides equally, so it moves the two cheques down together and leaves the gap between them unchanged. Competing offers are never guaranteed. Your actual offer depends on your home, its condition, and a certified appraisal.
Where the money disappears,
and where it does not.
Four steps each. The only real difference is step three, and it is the step you were never invited to.
You are not being
paranoid.
You have had the postcards. The texts that open with your address and a first name nobody uses. The offer that arrives before anyone has seen the inside of the house. You already worked out that a number produced that fast is not about your home.
Six states now require a wholesaler to be licensed, registered, or to disclose in writing that they hold a contract and intend to assign it. Legislatures do not write statutes about practices that were already being explained to people.
So no, I do not think your guard is up too high. I think it is up at exactly the right height, and I would rather earn my way past it than talk you out of it.
Every reason you have not to trust me.
In your words, in the order they actually turn up. Each one ends with how to check me on it, because an answer you cannot verify is just a nicer sales pitch.
- 1
“You’re a middleman. You’re going to flip my house and keep the difference.”
I am a middleman. I told you that before you asked.
I buy your home under a signed purchase agreement, at a price you set, all cash. Then I offer my spot in that contract to a network of investors, and one of them takes my place as the buyer. That is the business. You are reading it on my own website, in the first thirty seconds, before I have anything from you at all.
Check me on itAsk any cash buyer, in writing: do you intend to assign this contract? Mine says yes on the page you sign.
What the other way looks like: The usual version of this job is the same job with that one sentence left out until it is too late to matter.
- 2
“You’re about to lowball me and hope I don’t know any better.”
I do not get to decide what your home is worth. An appraiser does.
An independent, certified appraiser values your home and I hand you the full written appraisal. Not my estimate of your home, not a number I generated to anchor you low. It is yours to keep whether you sell to me, list with an agent, or throw me out of the house.
Check me on itAsk for the appraisal in writing, with the comparable sales it is built on, and read who prepared it. If a buyer will not put a valuation on paper with a name on it, that is the answer.
What the other way looks like: A lowball only works on someone who has not been shown their real number. That is why so few people are shown it.
- 3
“Fine. So where’s the catch? There’s always a fee somewhere.”
There is a fee. It is one fixed amount and you see it before you sign.
I charge a fee. Anyone who tells you they do not is either lying or hiding it in the spread between what they pay you and what they resell for. Mine is a fixed dollar amount, agreed with you in writing before anything is signed, and it does not change afterwards. There are no commissions.
Check me on itPoint at the fee on the agreement. It is a number, on a line, in the document. If you cannot point at it, it is not disclosed.
What the other way looks like: A fee you were never shown is not a smaller fee. It is the same fee, taken quietly.
- 4
“So you’ll sell it for way more than you paid me and pocket every cent of it.”
My fee cannot grow. Yours is the only side with upside.
Because my fee is a fixed dollar amount rather than a cut of the sale, a higher price does nothing for me. Investors compete for my contract in a 24-hour offer period, submitting their best offers against each other, and every dollar above your price goes to you. Not most of it. All of it. I am mathematically unable to profit from your equity, which is a much stronger promise than me swearing I would not.
Check me on itDrag the slider higher up this page until you believe it, then run your own numbers on the calculator on Our Model.
What the other way looks like: When the payday is the spread, every dollar of your equity that stays hidden is a dollar somebody else keeps.
- 5
“I’ll never find out what my house actually sold for.”
The closing statement shows it. Every number, through escrow.
No same-day double closing, no second sale you are not told about. It closes through a title company and escrow, and the closing statement carries the real figures: your price, my fee, what came in above it.
Check me on itAsk whether the deal closes once or twice. Two closings on one house in one day is not a technicality, and it exists to keep the second number away from you.
What the other way looks like: You cannot object to a number you were never shown. That is not an accident of the structure. It is the point of it.
- 6
“You’re going to pressure me into signing something today.”
You set the date. You can walk, and you keep the appraisal.
Close in about a week if you need to be gone, or take a couple of months if you have to find the next place first. Nothing is shown to a buyer until you have set your price, and until you sign there is nothing to get out of. If you walk away at any point, the appraisal is still yours.
Check me on itSay the words "I need to think about it" and watch what happens next. It tells you everything about who you are dealing with.
What the other way looks like: Urgency is the cheapest tool in this industry, and it is aimed hardest at people who are already in trouble.
- 7
“You need this deal more than I do.”
True. And that is exactly why you get the appraisal for free.
Take it to a real estate agent. Take it to the buyer who mailed you a postcard last week. Use it to argue with me. A certified valuation in your hand is leverage, and I hand it over knowing you might use it on me, because a seller who knows their number is the only kind I want to deal with.
Check me on itGet a second opinion after you have the appraisal, not before. It is a much better conversation when you already know the number.
What the other way looks like: Nobody hands leverage to someone they are planning to take advantage of.
- 8
“And if no investor turns up?”
Then you get your price. The one you already agreed to, in writing.
I am not going to promise you a bidding war. Competing offers are never guaranteed, and any buyer who guarantees one is selling you a feeling. What is guaranteed is the price on the purchase agreement, because that is a contract and not a forecast.
Check me on itAsk what happens if nobody bids. If the answer is vague, the number you were told is a hope and not an offer.
What the other way looks like: Auction language sells. A signed price at a fixed fee is the thing you can actually take to the bank.
- 9
“This is a website. Anyone can type this.”
Correct. So do not believe the page. Read the paperwork.
Everything above shows up as a document, which is the only reason it is worth anything: the appraisal, the purchase agreement with the fee written on it, the disclosure that I intend to assign the contract, and the escrow closing statement at the end. Four documents. Ask me for all four, ask every other buyer for all four, and compare who can produce them.
Check me on itAny cash buyer who cannot hand you those four has told you what they are, without having to admit anything.
What the other way looks like: The whole model on the other side depends on you never asking for the paperwork in one place at one time.
Four documents.
Ask every buyer for all four.
Including me. This is the whole test, and it works whether or not you ever call this company. A buyer who can produce all four has nothing riding on what you do not know.
All of it is written down as a policy you can hold me to, nine promises with a way to check each one.
Independent, in writing, with the comps. Yours to keep either way.
Your price and my fixed fee, both on the page, before you sign it.
In writing that I intend to offer my contract to investors.
Through escrow at the end, showing every figure in the deal.
When you should not sell to me.
I make money on this. I am not a charity and I am not your agent. My fee comes out of your deal, and the fact that it is disclosed and fixed does not make it free. Read it as what it is: a price for speed, certainty, and not having to fix anything.
If your house shows well and you can wait, an agent will usually net you more. A listed sale reaches every buyer in the market instead of the ones who buy with cash and take on the work. If you have got the months, the tolerance for showings, and a house that does not need much, that is normally the better road and I will say so out loud on the phone.
Competing offers are never guaranteed. Investors may push the number well past your price, or none may bid at all. What is fixed is the price you agreed and the fee you approved.
Where this helps is the other situation entirely: an inherited house full of somebody else’s life, a foreclosure date on the calendar, a divorce, a rental you are finished with, a roof you are not going to replace, or a move you needed to make last month. Speed and certainty are worth real money there, and that is honestly what you are buying from me.
So. Am I the enemy?
Do not answer that from a website. Get the certified appraisal, read the fee on the agreement, ask what happens if nobody bids, and then decide. The valuation is yours to keep whichever way you go, and there is no cost and no obligation for finding out what your home is actually worth.
I wrote this page myself, and I am the person you get on the phone. If any of it turns out not to match what I put in front of you, you have my name to hold it against. See the whole process step by step.