An iBuyer and a local cash buyer both make an offer without a mortgage and without listing the house, and from there they work differently. An iBuyer runs pricing through an algorithm and a company process. We walk the house and price what we saw. Both skip the MLS. What changes is how the number gets set, whether it moves after the first offer, and whether the house even qualifies at all.
Both are still middlemen buying to resell, not a buyer who plans to live in the house, so neither one is bidding against a family shopping the MLS for a home. The gap between them is upstream of price: an iBuyer’s model has to fit a house into a program built for many markets at once, and a house that does not fit the program does not get an offer at all, no matter its condition.
| An iBuyer | A local cash buyer (us) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | An automated valuation built from recent comparable sales and public data, generated before anyone has been inside the house. | A number built after we walk the house ourselves and see its actual condition. |
| Speed | A preliminary offer can appear online within minutes, but it is typically revised after an in-person or virtual inspection. | A walkthrough comes first, then one number, and it does not move afterward unless something changes at inspection. |
| Fees | Opendoor’s own help center says its service charge is not a fixed percentage: it is shown in the individual offer breakdown and varies by market, property and condition. | No separate service fee line. Repairs and our margin are already built into the one number we give. |
| Certainty | The published process is consistent, but the number can change after the company’s own inspection turns up something the algorithm missed. | One inspection, from us, before we give a price, so there is less left to move afterward. |
| Who does the work | A company you deal with mostly through an app or an online portal. | A person who walked the house handles the offer, the questions and the closing. |
Where an iBuyer wins
An iBuyer’s biggest advantage is the up-front process: a preliminary number can appear online without anyone knocking on a door, and if a house is newer, sits in a price band and a metro market the company actually covers, that can be the fastest way to see a rough number before deciding anything. The tradeoff is built into the model itself: an algorithm prices to the comparable sales it can see, not the specific condition of the house, so it tends to work best on a fairly standard house that would already price predictably on its own.
Where a local cash buyer wins
We buy houses an algorithm would reject: older houses, ones that need real repair, houses outside a covered metro, or ones with a feature a model cannot value correctly. Because one person walks the house before we name a number, that number does not move later the way an algorithmic offer can once a company’s own inspector shows up. And there is one person to talk to from the first call through closing, not a portal. If a house needs work an iBuyer’s program will not touch, or sits outside the metro areas those companies cover, a local walkthrough is often the only way to get an actual number at all rather than a message that the program does not serve that address.
See a number on your house.
Street and city, a few questions about the house, then a ballpark. Your name and phone come last, and we do not call unless you ask.
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