Real estate agents list properties and hope that someone will buy them. The agent shows the properties to prospective buyers if there are any (the average time to sell a property in many markets right now is 6-12 months) and then take a percentage of the sale price if they find a buyer. Oftentimes, the agent’s commission is 3-6% of the sale price of your house (so if it’s a $100,000 house, you’ll pay between $3,000 – $6,000 in commissions to an agent). Agents provide a great service for those that can wait 6-12 months to sell and who don’t mind giving up some of that sale price to pay for the commissions. But that’s where we’re different: We’re not agents, we’re home buyers. Our company actually buys houses. We don’t list houses. Since we’re actually the one buying the house from you, and we pay with all cash… we can make a decision to buy your house within a couple of days (sometimes the same day). Again, we make our living by taking the risk to buy the house with our own cash, repair the house, and market it ourselves to find a buyer (which is the hard part in this market).