What Are iBuyer Companies, and How Do Their Offers Really Work?

How iBuyer Companies Actually Price a Home

An iBuyer company doesn't send anyone to walk the house first. It prices the purchase with an automated valuation model. A seller fills out a short online questionnaire about condition, size, and location, and the algorithm spits back a preliminary number, often within minutes to 48 hours. That number is not final. Every major iBuyer company follows up with an in-person or virtual home assessment, and the price gets cut for repairs the algorithm never saw: an aging roof, a water stain, an outdated HVAC unit. Then comes the service fee, and industry pricing studies put that at roughly 5% to 9.5% of the sale price, on top of the repair deductions. A 2019 Collateral Analytics study, reported by Forbes, found the full cost, fees, repair credits, and closing costs combined, ran 13% to 15% of a home's sale price. A traditional agent-listed sale ran 5% to 7%. On a $200,000 home, that gap can run close to $20,000. That study is several years old now, and individual iBuyer pricing has shifted since. But the pattern it found still holds: an appealing headline number that shrinks after assessment. That's the same mechanic sellers report running into with iBuyer companies operating in Florida today.

The iBuyer Timeline: From Online Request to Closing

The iBuyer process runs in five steps. The seller submits property details online, about 5 to 10 minutes. A preliminary offer comes back within 24 to 48 hours. Then an in-person or virtual home assessment. Then the seller picks a closing date. Then it closes and funds wire over. Closing windows for the largest iBuyer companies generally run 14 to 60 days from acceptance, with some offering an expedited close in two to three weeks when a seller needs to move fast. That beats a traditional listing by a wide margin: the Florida market average from list date to closed sale runs 45 to 60 days, and that clock doesn't even start until a financed buyer is under contract, not the day the seller decides to sell. Here's the tradeoff: that speed comes bundled with a preliminary number that gets adjusted downward once the in-person assessment turns up repair needs. Accepting an iBuyer's initial number means agreeing to a process, not locking a price.

Which iBuyer Companies Are Still Buying, and Which Ones Quit

Four iBuyer companies are still standing. Opendoor: founded 2014, the largest, buying in dozens of U.S. markets. Offerpad: founded 2015, known for extended move-out windows after closing. Orchard: a trade-in model that pairs an iBuyer-style purchase with buy-before-you-sell support. Knock: bridge financing through a program it calls Home Swap. Two of the biggest names already quit. Zillow shut down Zillow Offers in November 2021, stating publicly its pricing algorithm couldn't reliably predict home values at scale. Redfin closed RedfinNow in 2022. Both had spent years and real capital trying to make algorithmic pricing profitable first. That's the signal: the automated-offer model is harder to run at scale than it looks, even for a national brand sitting on deep home-value data. A Florida seller comparing iBuyer companies today is picking from a shorter list of survivors than existed five years ago. Worth knowing before assuming any one company's number speaks for the whole market.

Comparing iBuyer Companies, a Traditional Listing, and Cash Flow Deals

As a Florida seller, you can compare three routes: an iBuyer company's automated offer, a traditional agent-listed sale, or the two offers from Cash Flow Deals. Each trades speed, price certainty, and cost differently. An iBuyer company moves fast and stays hands-off, but the number you see on day one isn't the number you net at closing once the service fee and post-assessment repair deductions land. A traditional listing can bring you a higher sale price, but it comes with showings, staging costs, financing contingencies that can fall through, and a 45-to-60-day timeline that resets if the first buyer's loan doesn't close.

The gap between an iBuyer's opening number and your actual net is well documented. Total costs, fees, repair credits, and closing costs combined, have been measured at 13% to 15% of a home's sale price for iBuyer companies, versus 5% to 7% for a traditional agent-listed sale. Compare what you would actually receive from each route.

With Cash Flow Deals, you choose between the Fast Cash Offer, where we buy your house as-is and close, and the Premium Cash Offer, where a pre-approved FHA or conventional buyer we already have, ready to go, pays more and buys directly from you. We are a Florida real estate investor. On the Premium path, your home may be listed through Silver Door Realty, a licensed Florida brokerage, with a licensed agent and scheduled showings.

We cover repair costs, and we figure out a way, so nothing comes out of your pocket. On the Premium path, only what the buyer's lender requires gets fixed, with repair costs settled from the sale proceeds out of our share. On the Fast Cash Offer path, we buy your house as-is, with no repairs for you to make. For either offer, the number is agreed before any work starts, and it changes only if you agree. The one exception: if something structural surfaces that was not visible or disclosed before we signed — foundation issues, hidden moisture, old wiring, cast-iron drain failure — we re-cost it and bring the number back to you. You decide. You can walk away. We disclose what we know at offer time so this almost never happens.

The Cash Flow Deals process runs in three steps:

1. We review your property and respond within 24 hours with the Fast Cash Offer and the Premium Cash Offer, based on your home's current condition, so you can choose.

2. You sign a written contract for the offer you choose. For Premium, you give us permission to bring in a buyer in our place. That buyer signs a new contract directly with you, title transfers directly from you to them, and their lender funds the purchase. We are paid as a separate line item on the closing statement.

3. You help pick the closing date. The existing closing description is 45 days or less; your written contract sets the timing for the offer you choose. If your Premium buyer's loan falls through, that is our problem, not yours. You can still choose the Fast Cash Offer at its own number instead of the Premium Cash Offer.