Ask ten sellers what cash home buyers pay and you will hear the same guess: about half. Sometimes that is right, and sometimes it is off by $40,000. The real answer depends on which kind of buyer you call, and there is now decent published data on each. Here are the numbers.
iBuyers: 86 to 91 Percent of Value, Minus Fees
In February 2026, Clever Real Estate published an analysis of 532 actual iBuyer purchases closed between May 2023 and June 2025, comparing each offer to what the home later resold for. Opendoor offers averaged 8.79 percent below resale value. Offerpad averaged 13.89 percent below. Subtract a service charge in the 5 percent range, about 1 percent in closing costs, and a post inspection repair deduction, and the all in cost of an iBuyer sale commonly lands between 8 and 13 percent of the home value. The constraint is condition: iBuyers want homes that need little work, and they decline or heavily adjust everything else.
Franchise Buyers: 50 to 70 Percent of Value
Brands like We Buy Ugly Houses, the marketing name of HomeVestors, buy genuinely any condition and charge no fees, and published analyses consistently put their offers at 50 to 70 percent of market value. Part of that gap is real economics, repairs and resale risk get priced in, and part of it is franchise overhead that comes out of the spread before you ever see a number.
Local Independent Buyers: It Depends, and That Is the Point
Independent companies like ours have no franchise fees or corporate margin baked in, so on the same house a local buyer can often beat a franchise offer. The range is wider in both directions, though, because nobody audits independents. The fix is competition: get two or three offers, because the spread between cash offers on the same house is routinely five figures.
The Math on a Real Example
Take a house worth $200,000 fixed up that needs $35,000 of work. A reasonable direct buyer works backward: $200,000 after repair value, minus repair budget, minus selling and holding costs around $15,000, minus a margin in the $20,000 range, lands near $130,000. A franchise offer at 60 percent of current as is value might come in closer to $100,000. An agent listing as is might bring $145,000 minus 5 to 6 percent commission, with 60 to 90 days of showings and financing risk. None of those is wrong. They are different products. What matters is seeing all three numbers before you pick one, and we show our version of this math on every offer we make, explained on our how we buy houses page.
How to Get the Top of the Range
Make buyers compete, ask every buyer to show their math, confirm proof of funds and a title company closing, and check our company comparisons before you call anyone, including us.