Are Georgia house buying companies the same as IBuyer or Redfin?
What is an IBuyer?
All industries are trying to go digital. It’s cheaper, faster and the “in” thing. Home owners that want to sell their house usually call a realtor that comes out to the house, makes suggestions and then lists the house in the MLS. This wide online network of realtors, sellers and buyers has been the main choice for many years. In more recent years, reality TV has made real estate investing extremely popular, which has caused a new industry of house buyers to grow. These new house direct buyers market post cards and bandit signs to find home sellers they can buy directly from instead of going thru a realtor or the MLS. Starting as individual investors buying houses for their rental portfolio, direct house buying has grown into a full “We buy houses” industry.
NOW, investing companies have begun to buy residential houses in large scales and learned how to use the power of the internet to make offers in all 50 states from a single office. “We buy houses” companies have partnered up into a large network of home buyers to profit from more houses in areas they could not touch before.
“offer will be 60-80% of the current market value…”
When you find a link to an ibuyer (known as “instant buyer”) on the internet and click it, it will take you to a form that you must fill out. That form gets sent to one of thousands of house buyers in their network that cover your area. They run the numbers on your house based on some algorithm, and sends you an offer. Usually, the offer will be 60-80% of the current market value of the house. You decide if you’re willing to accept that offer. If not, you can still list it with an agent.
OK, Is there a difference in “IBuyers” and local house buying companies?
“These IBuyers are wholesalers and flippers that have partnered up with Zillow…”
The biggest difference between IBuyers, Redfin and local house buying companies is location, location, location (real estate joke there). Local home buyers are just that… Local! They are in your town and know your market. Many can offer better prices. IBuyers are mostly in the major cities and don’t know the market in many of the other towns they make offers in.
These IBuyers are wholesalers and flippers that have partnered up with Zillow and other online listing sites to help them market. Since Zillow has such a large market following, this allows the IBuyers network to go national and make offers on houses that normally would be sold on the MLS by a real estate agent or bought by a local Direct home buyer. Mainly, ibuyers are like local house buyers with bigger marketing budgets and fewer options to offer.
If I need to sell my house fast, who should I go with?
As of this posting, the IBuyer network has been turned off on the Zillow site. The current covid-19 pandemic has scared the investors in the IBuyer network into “holding” (as they say in the stock exchange). Since they only make discounted cash offers, they don’t want to risk owning too many houses if the market prices fall. After all, they ARE investors.
Local house buyers are more personal and use many more tricks to solve your house problem. Any house buyer, homeowner or professional, is willing to offer you 80 cents on the dollar for your house. So why do people use IBuyer? Because they are marketing on Zillow and easy to find. This also gives them instant credibility because they are affiliated with Zillow. They are using the wide marketing reach of Zillow to get in front of more people. They are in your face as soon as you hit the internet.
How do I find the local “IBuyers”?
The easiest way to find a direct home buyer in your area is to use search engine keywords like;
- “we buy houses in __city__ “
- “Sell my house in __city__”
- “Buy my house in __city__”
See the pattern? Most local home buyers will have the cities they service at the bottom of their site. The fewer cities they list, the more localized they are. Simple!
Conclusion to choosing a local direct house buyer to Ibuyers?
Unless an IBuyer lives right around the corner or within your area, they are not going to give you as reasonable price as a local professional home buyer can. IBuyers only make discounted offers, local direct buyers are more likely to solve your real estate problem. It’s like choosing a shade tree mechanic over the ASE certified master technician. Local house buyers will offer the same speed and convenience of sale as the big national wholesaler in the iBuyer network AND they can offer more solution to when selling your house fast is not your only concern.
Tell us your experience with an “IBuyer”.