Gone are the days when selling your home meant tedious cleaning, home-improvements, staging and marketing—not to mention weeks (or even months) of holding costs while the house sits on the market. Thanks to a new breed of buyers called iBuyers, selling a house is as easy as a few taps of the keyboard.

What is an iBuyer?

iBuyers are companies that purchase homes directly from the owner. When working with an iBuyer, sellers don’t have to pay an agent, list the home for sale, stage it, make repairs, market the property or even show it to potential buyers. Instead, they tell the iBuyer about the property—things like its age, condition, and location—then leveraging the power of recent sales data and a mathematical algorithm, the iBuyer predicts the home’s value.

If the property meets the iBuyers purchasing criteria, they present the seller with a no-obligation cash offer. With an accepted offer, sellers can get paid in days or weeks depending on the closing date they choose.

In most cases, iBuyers take the properties they purchase, make minimal improvements, and list the property on the open market or sell them to investors for a profit.

Top iBuyers

There are a number of prominent iBuyers in the market and each one plays by its own rules. Here’s a list of the top iBuyers:

Simple Sale

HomeLight's Simple Sale provides an all-cash offer for homes in almost any condition through a network of cash buyers.

Opendoor

Launched in 2013, Opendoor is the original iBuyer. The company both buys and sells properties and operates in most markets across the U.S.

Offerpad

Offerpad works essentially the same as Opendoor, both buying and selling real estate. It operates in in a growing number of markets and includes free local moves.

In addition to the main players, there’s a handful of smaller, market-based iBuyers that operate in specific markets. Traditional real estate firms and brokerages (like Keller Williams) are even creating their own internal “iBuyer” programs to give customers more options.

Pros and Cons of Using an iBuyer

Convenience and speed are the main benefits of using an iBuyer. For sellers, there’s no tedious staging or marketing of the home, and they don’t have to wait weeks or months for loan underwriting, inspections and closing processes to take place. This can be especially advantageous for sellers needing to relocate quickly or for those who just don’t have the bandwidth, time or resources to deal with the open market.

Using an iBuyer also means cutting out the need for a real estate agent. In many cases, agents receive up to 6% of the transaction cost as commission. This can be a hefty price tag to bear and one of the reasons iBuyers are growing in popularity.

For a complete look at all the costs associated with a traditional home sale, be sure to check out our article How to Calculate Net Proceeds from a Home Sale.

It’s important to remember, iBuyers have to make a profit and to do that, and they can’t offer sellers full market value for their homes. This typically means sellers get slightly less for their home than they would if they used traditional methods. iBuyers also need to cover the cost of repairs and maintenance in order to make the home marketable. These expenses are factored into the cash offer extended by each iBuyer.

If you're considering selling your home "as-is", be sure to visit "Should You Sell as-is?"