Several years ago, a dear family friend was in a financial pickle, and desperate to sell her house. She called one of those “We Buy Ugly Houses” type companies, and they made her an offer.  I took one look at the contract and almost got sick. The offer price was paltry, and there were numerous loopholes that gave the company additional ways to separate her from her hard-earned equity.

I asked her for the opportunity to list the house on the open market. We listed it. It went under contract in a day, for far more than the company had offered, and she walked away with a boatload more equity, which she used to pay off bills and buy another home for her family.

Now the same “We Buy Ugly Houses” philosophy is back, but this time it’s dressed up in a prettier package, with billions in Wall Street money behind it. Now they call themselves “iBuyers”, and they are filling the airways and interwebs with ads about how you can use them to sell your house far more quickly and conveniently than traditional real estate listings.