Last updated: July 2026. Every company fact on this page comes from that company’s own published pages or the federal record, with dates.
Type your address into a cash offer website and one of two things happens. Either the company on the screen buys your house, or your address becomes a lead, routed to buyers and agents you have never heard of. This page explains how to tell the difference before you hit submit.
We Buy Houses Arizona™ has bought homes across Arizona since 1999, fifteen years before the first iBuyer opened its doors in Phoenix. What follows is not a ranking and not a review. It is a plain explanation of how each kind of online cash offer site actually works, drawn from the companies’ own published pages and from the federal record, so you can see the machinery before you put your information into it.
The Three Machines Behind Every Cash Offer Website
Every online cash offer site looks the same from the outside: a form, a promise of speed, a big button. Underneath, they run on three different machines, and which machine you are standing in front of decides what happens to your information and your sale.
The first machine is the principal buyer. Opendoor and Offerpad are iBuyers: publicly traded companies that purchase homes directly, on their own balance sheets, and resell them. When you submit your address to one of them, the company on the screen really is the buyer. What that costs you is published, mostly. Offerpad’s own FAQ lists a 5% service fee plus roughly 1% in closing costs, as of July 2026. Opendoor no longer publishes a fixed percentage at all. Its Help Center states that the service charge varies by home and market and appears only in your individual offer breakdown, while the company’s own articles describe it as “typically around 5%.” Both companies deduct repair costs after inspection, which is why Opendoor’s Help Center maintains an entire article explaining why final offers differ from preliminary ones. Both also publish eligibility limits. Offerpad’s FAQ excludes homes built before 1950, lots over two acres, homes above roughly $1 million depending on market, manufactured homes, and homes with significant structural issues. A principal buyer is a real buyer, for the houses it wants.
The second machine is the lead-routing marketplace. Clever Real Estate, HomeLight, and Sundae operate websites that offer cash offers, but the company running the site is not the party that buys the house. Clever’s own FAQ describes an agent-matching service: free to you, paid by a referral fee the matched agent gives Clever out of their commission when your sale closes. HomeLight’s homepage describes the same core business at larger scale, with a Simple Sale program that, in HomeLight’s own words, connects you with a network of cash buyers. HomeLight is the connector, not the buyer. Sundae, a smaller marketplace, shows the design in one glance: its consumer pages describe making you a competitive cash offer, while its investor FAQ on the same website describes an off-market auction where investors bid on your home and pay Sundae a fee on the winning bid. Two pages, one website. The seller sees an offer. The investors see an auction. Almost no seller reads the investor side.
The third machine is the review layer, and it is the one almost nobody examines. Search for reviews of any company on this page and much of the first page of results is written by companies in the second machine. Clever Real Estate operates a family of content brands, including Real Estate Witch and Anytime Estimate, that publish reviews and rankings of iBuyers, cash buyers, and each other, and those pages route readers toward Clever’s own offer marketplace. That is an ownership fact, not an accusation. It simply means that when you research this category online, the reviewer, the ranker, and the referral fee frequently live in the same building.
The category also has a history worth knowing. Zillow, the biggest name in online real estate, ran its own iBuyer program and shut it down in November 2021 after losses of roughly $880 million that year. People still search for a Zillow cash offer every month. It has not existed for five years. The lesson is not that online cash offers are fake. It is that the machine behind the button changes, and the button never tells you.
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What to Watch For
You do not need to be an expert to protect yourself from the wrong machine. You need four questions and about ten minutes.
Question one: is the company on this website the actual buyer? The answer is usually on the site itself, in the language. Principal buyers say “we buy” and mean it. Marketplaces say “we connect you,” “our network,” “we match you,” “our partners.” Those words are disclosures. If the site describes a network, the company is not your buyer. Your buyer is somebody inside the network, and you may not know who until an offer is already in front of you. There is nothing wrong with that model, and nothing hidden about it. But you deserve to know before you type your address whether you are talking to a buyer or a switchboard.
Question two: what happens to your information the moment you hit submit? Read the consent line under the form, the small text nobody reads. On Clever’s homepage, as of May 2026, that fine print states that by submitting, you agree to receive recurring calls, emails, and text messages from Clever and its affiliates, even if your number is on the Do Not Call registry. That is their own published disclosure, and it is honest. It also tells you exactly what a free offer costs: your contact information starts working for the platform the moment you hand it over. Check for the same language wherever you submit; if the consent line mentions affiliates or partners, expect your phone to find out.
Question three: what does the public record show? This category has a government record, and it is worth two minutes of your time. In August 2022, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Opendoor over marketing claims made to home sellers between 2017 and 2019. According to the FTC, Opendoor’s marketing told sellers they would come out ahead selling to Opendoor rather than on the open market, when in reality most made thousands of dollars less. The final order, approved by a 4 to 0 Commission vote in October 2022, required Opendoor to pay $62 million and to support any future claims about costs or savings with reliable evidence. In April 2024, the FTC distributed those funds as refunds to 54,689 home sellers. Opendoor settled without admitting wrongdoing, has said it disagrees with the allegations, and discusses the settlement openly on its own website today. Both things can be true at once: Opendoor is a legitimate company, and a federal regulator found its early marketing misleading enough to order $62 million returned to sellers. The lesson is not that any one company is bad. It is that in this category, the gap between the advertised number and the final number was once wide enough that the federal government stepped in. The FTC’s press releases on the case are public, and we link them here rather than summarize them further, so you can read the record yourself. Verify the current number, in writing, before you sign anything.
Question four: are you reading the company, or reading about the company? When you research fees, go to the company’s own current pages, not to review sites. In preparing this page, we found third-party review figures for iBuyer fees that differed from what the companies themselves currently publish. We are not naming the sites, because the point is not one site’s error. The point is that review-layer numbers drift, and a company’s own published page, with a date on it, is the only figure worth relying on. That is also the standard this page holds itself to: every company fact here comes from that company’s own published pages or a government record, with the date we checked it, and when a company changes its page, we update ours.
What each of these paths actually costs in dollars, the service fees, repair deductions, commissions, and what lands in your pocket, is its own question, and we keep that math on one page so you can compare it side by side: see our full breakdown of a cash offer versus listing versus an iBuyer.
What a Real Direct Buyer Looks Like
After all that, the alternative is almost boring, and that is the point.
A direct buyer is the first machine with the shortest possible wiring: the company you are talking to buys the house, with its own money, in its own market, and you can check every claim it makes before you ever pick up the phone. No network. No routing. No investor side of the website, because there are no investors behind the curtain. The name on the agreement is the name on the door.
Here is what that looks like in practice, using us as the example, because we can prove our version of it. We Buy Houses Arizona™ has bought more than 2,000 homes across Arizona since 1999. We are BBB A+ accredited, and have been since 2019. When we make you an offer, it comes from Stephen W. Rockwell or the team he built, trained, and stands behind, not from a bidder pool you cannot see. We buy with our own cash, so there is no loan that can fall through, and we put at least $5,000 in earnest money into escrow with a licensed Arizona title company the same day you sign. The price on the agreement is the price at closing, in writing, under the terms of our SafeClose™ Program. If we fail to close under the terms of our agreement, that earnest money is yours. You can see every step of that process, from first call to closing day, in how we buy houses.
None of that requires you to trust us. All of it can be verified before you call, and we encourage exactly that. Our full guide to verifying any cash home buyer, including us, walks through the public records that separate real buyers from the rest.
One honest caveat, because this page has been honest about everyone else: a direct buyer is not always your best-paying option. If your house is in strong condition and you have time, listing it will usually net you more, and an iBuyer may too, if your house fits their criteria. Where a direct buyer wins is certainty, speed, condition, and the absence of machinery between you and the person actually buying. The math of all three paths lives on our comparison page. The machinery is what this page was for.
A Note From Stephen W. Rockwell
The iBuyer experiment was born in my backyard.
Opendoor’s first market in the country was Phoenix, in 2014. Offerpad launched in metro Phoenix the following year. Even the FTC’s settlement order identifies Opendoor as headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, a short drive from my office in Mesa. When Wall Street decided to test whether an algorithm could buy houses, it ran the test here, in my market, on my neighbors.
By the time that test began, I had already been buying Arizona houses for fifteen years. I watched the billboards go up, watched the offers go out, and watched sellers I later bought from describe what happened between the number on the screen and the number at closing. I watched Zillow enter the business and exit it three years later. I am not writing this page as an observer of the category. I have underwritten against every machine described on it, in the same ZIP codes, through the same market cycles, since 1999.
So take this page in the spirit it was written. I did not write it to tell you online cash offer sites are scams. Most are not. Opendoor and Offerpad buy real houses with real money, and for a certain seller with a certain house, one of them may be your best option. I wrote it because the category runs on a gap: the gap between what the button promises and what the machine behind it does. Every fact on this page came from the companies’ own websites or from a federal record, with dates, and you are welcome to check each one. That is the same standard I invite you to hold me to. Type my company’s name into the BBB, the county recorder, the Arizona Corporation Commission. The more you dig, the more it holds up.
One piece of advice, whatever you decide: never let the form know more than you do. Before you type your address into any website, including mine, know whether you are talking to the buyer or to the switchboard, know what their current published numbers are, and know what the record shows. Ten minutes of reading beats ten weeks of regret.
— Stephen W. Rockwell, Founder, We Buy Houses Arizona™
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens when you enter your address on a cash offer website?
One of two things. If the site is a principal buyer like Opendoor or Offerpad, the company itself evaluates your home and makes you an offer. If the site is a marketplace like Clever, HomeLight, or Sundae, your address becomes a lead: it is routed to the company’s network of agents, investors, or partner buyers, and the follow-up comes from them. The consent language under the form usually tells you which one you are dealing with, so read it before you hit submit.
Is the company on the website the one actually buying your house?
Not always, and the site’s own language is the tell. Companies that buy directly say “we buy.” Companies that route leads say “we connect you,” “our network,” or “our partners.” As of July 2026, Opendoor and Offerpad purchase homes on their own balance sheets, while Clever, HomeLight, and Sundae describe themselves on their own websites as services that match or connect you with other buyers and agents. Neither model is hidden. But only one of them means the name on the screen is the name on your agreement.
Is Opendoor legit?
Yes. Opendoor is a publicly traded company that buys real houses with real money and has operated since 2014, starting in Phoenix. Legitimate and best-for-you are different questions, though. In 2022, the FTC ordered Opendoor to pay $62 million over marketing claims made to sellers between 2017 and 2019, finding that most sellers made thousands less than the marketing suggested; Opendoor settled without admitting wrongdoing and disputes the allegations. Today Opendoor publishes no fixed service-charge percentage, describing it as typically around 5%, with repair costs deducted after inspection. The company is real. Verify the current numbers on your specific offer, in writing, before you sign.
How do cash offer websites make money?
It depends on the machine. Principal buyers like Opendoor and Offerpad earn a service charge on each purchase, roughly 5% by their own current descriptions, plus whatever they make reselling the home. Marketplaces earn from the other side of the table: Clever’s FAQ says partner agents pay Clever a share of their commission when your sale closes, and Sundae’s investor FAQ describes fees paid by the winning bidder. If a site is free to you, you are not the customer. Your sale is the product the network is paying for.
Can you trust the sites that review and rank cash home buyers?
Read them with the ownership in mind. Some of the review sites in this category are operated by companies that earn referral revenue from the same category they review. Clever Real Estate, for example, operates content brands including Real Estate Witch and Anytime Estimate that publish reviews and rankings of iBuyers and cash buyers while routing readers toward Clever’s own offer marketplace. That is a disclosed ownership structure, not a secret. It simply means a review site can be both a publication and a sales funnel, so check any fee or figure against the company’s own current pages before relying on it.
Is Opendoor still buying houses?
Yes. As of July 2026, Opendoor is actively operating, maintains current offer documentation in its Help Center, and continues to purchase homes in its markets, subject to its published eligibility criteria. The confusion usually comes from two real events: Zillow shut down its own iBuyer program in 2021, and Opendoor’s buying pace and criteria have tightened over the years. Zillow Offers is gone. Opendoor is not.
What happened to Zillow Offers?
Zillow shut down Zillow Offers, its iBuyer program, in November 2021, after losses of roughly $880 million that year, and exited the business of buying homes directly. People still search for a Zillow cash offer every month, but the program has not existed since 2021. Requests on Zillow today route to other companies’ programs rather than to Zillow as a buyer, which makes it a useful reminder: the machine behind a familiar button can change completely while the button stays the same.
What’s the difference between an iBuyer and a lead-generation site?
An iBuyer is a principal buyer: a company like Opendoor or Offerpad that purchases your home itself, with its own funds, using an algorithm-assisted offer. A lead-generation site is a middle layer: it collects your information and routes it to a network of agents or investors, earning a fee when a match closes. The practical test is who signs as buyer on your agreement. For what an iBuyer actually costs compared with listing or a direct cash sale, see our full comparison of all three paths.
Still have questions?
Call or text (480) 444-2274
Run Your Own Check
You do not have to take this page’s word for anything, and you should not. Read the consent line under any form before you submit your address. Pull the companies’ current pages and the FTC’s own releases, all linked above, and check the dates. Then, if you want real numbers instead of advertised ones, get them: an agent’s opinion of your list price, an iBuyer offer if your home fits the box, and a firm written offer from us. Whichever path wins, make sure of one thing before you sign: the name on the screen is the name on your agreement.
If the direct path is the one worth pricing, we will give you a number you can hold us to, from the shortest wire in the category: no network, no routing, no obligation. Call (480) 444-2274 or request your offer, and see how we buy houses from start to finish before you commit to anything.
Sources: Company model descriptions and figures on this page are drawn from Opendoor’s published Help Center and articles, Offerpad’s published FAQ, Clever Real Estate’s published homepage and FAQ, HomeLight’s published pages, and Sundae’s published consumer and investor pages, all as of July 2026; from the Federal Trade Commission’s public press releases on the 2022 Opendoor settlement, linked above; and from public news coverage of Zillow Offers’ November 2021 shutdown. Business models, fee structures, and purchase criteria change; verify current terms on the companies’ own sites.
Content by Stephen W. Rockwell, Founder of We Buy Houses Arizona™. Mesa, Arizona. Est. 1999. BBB A+ Accredited. Updated July 2026.