Cash buyer vs iBuyer in Utah, fee by fee.

The cash buyer vs iBuyer question sounds like it should be simple, because on the surface the two products look identical. Put in your address, get a number without listing the house, close on a date you choose, skip the showings. Where they part company is what happens between the number you're quoted and the money you're paid.

An iBuyer prices from software. Public records, recent sales, square footage, year built, and a model that has to be cautious because nobody from the company has seen the house. That's a real advantage on a house that looks ordinary in the data: their instant offer can start higher than ours, and we'll say so.

Then the deductions start. A service fee comes off the top, typically around 5% of the price, which is a listing commission by another name. An inspection follows, and whatever it finds is itemized and taken off as well. The number you sign can end up some way below the one that arrived in your inbox on day one, and how far below depends on the house.

Our number has one deduction, and it's already applied. Condition is priced in at the start, which is why there's no inspection contingency in our contract and no service fee anywhere in it. What Property Seller Solutions offers is what the title company wires you, less only what's already owed against the property.

Where an iBuyer will beat us, and you should let them

If your house was built in the last twenty or thirty years, it's in good condition, it sits in a zip code they cover, and you don't need anything unusual from the sale, an iBuyer will often net you more than we can. Their model is built for exactly that house: light repairs, fast resale, low risk, so they can pay closer to retail. Take the higher number.

We're built for the other house. The 1960s rambler with a failed furnace. The house with a tenant who stopped paying. Fire damage, foundation movement, an unpermitted addition, forty years of belongings in the basement, a probate case still open. Software declines those houses, or prices them as though the worst is true. A person walking through it can price what's actually there.

Most Utah houses still change hands the ordinary way. Roughly nine sellers in ten worked with an agent, according to the National Association of Realtors' profile of home buyers and sellers, and if your house is in good shape that route is still worth pricing. We set it out on cash buyer vs realtor.

Both routes are easiest to judge by walking through them, so here they are, from the first click or the first phone call to the day the money lands.

Selling to an iBuyer

You enter the address on a website and answer questions about the house. Photographs help. A preliminary number comes back quickly, sometimes in minutes, which is the whole appeal of an instant offer and a genuinely useful thing to have.

If you accept in principle, an inspection is scheduled, either in person or by video. What it finds is written up as a repair estimate and deducted from the price, and the revised offer is the one you actually sign. The service fee comes off separately. Closing is arranged inside a window the company sets, usually a few weeks out, and everything after that happens by email.

It works. For the right house it works well, and for a seller who wants no conversation at all it may be exactly right. Three things are worth doing before you sign: read the clause that lets the price change after the inspection, ask for the total of every fee in dollars rather than percentages, and ask whether anything is owed if you change your mind and cancel. Those three answers turn a quoted number into a real one.

Selling to us

You call (385) 503-4333 and a person in Utah answers, from 8am to 7pm, seven days a week. We ask three things: where the house is, what state it's in, and when you need to be out. Then somebody drives out and walks through it, once.

The offer comes in writing inside 24 hours with the three figures behind it: what comparable houses nearby actually closed at, what the repairs cost, and what it costs us to hold and resell. You can argue with any of them, and people do. If you accept, we close at a Utah title company on the date you picked, 7 days or 60. If you want the sequence in more detail, it's on sell my house fast, and what the paperwork contains is on cash offer.

Is this you?

A local cash buyer is usually the better fit when one of these is true:

• The house is older, or needs work an inspection would turn into a long list
• An iBuyer has already declined it, or their number dropped after the inspection
• There's a tenant in place, or somebody living there who isn't leaving for a walkthrough
• The house is part of an estate, a divorce, or anything with paperwork attached
• You want to ask a person a question and get an answer the same day
• The closing date has to be yours rather than somebody's scheduling window
• You've been told the house falls outside what they buy in your part of Utah

If your house is newer and tidy, get an instant offer first and use it as a floor. Then get ours, and compare the two after every fee and deduction, not before. The seven questions worth asking any buyer, us included, are on companies that buy houses. We've bought 1,300+ houses in Utah since 2016, hold an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, and average 4.9 across 520 Google reviews. When you want a second number to set beside the first, get your cash offer and we'll call you back within one business day.