Hour One
An address arrives through a form with four taps behind it. Somebody opens the flood mapping before opening the photographs.
That order is specific to this region and it is not politeness. A house that must be replaced on a parcel where replacement requires findings is a different asset from the identical house on unconstrained ground, and nothing in the photographs distinguishes them.
Then the parcel record for the jurisdiction, the recorded deed and any liens, and the permit history. Perhaps twenty minutes before anyone forms a view of a number.
The Call
Short, and the questions are duller than sellers expect. What the fire reached. Whether the claim is open. Whether anyone has said anything about the foundation. Whether an excavator has been anywhere near the property.
That last one is the question we ask most urgently, because clearing a damaged structure can convert an arguable repair into an unarguable replacement and it cannot be reversed. We would rather establish that in the first two minutes than discover it at the end.
Why Does That Matter to a Buyer?
The Arithmetic
Four lines and no fifth. Finished value of what can realistically be done there. The cost of getting to it. Carrying cost while that happens. Margin.
California charges a documentary transfer tax collected at county level, with some cities adding a local charge, so that comes off as well. We show the lines rather than a single number, because a figure nobody can interrogate is no use to somebody comparing offers.
Nothing in that arithmetic is charged to the seller. No fee, no commission, no deduction, no cost for a figure and none for turning it down. We make money on the gap between what we pay and what the finished property is worth, which is the whole of it.
The Email That Says No
Perhaps a third of the time the arithmetic points away from us, and the email says so.
Where the structure came through and the repair sits below finished value, restoring keeps the whole margin, and it also avoids the findings question entirely. Where the parcel is clean and the lot is attractive, a rebuilder with a project already staffed will outbid us. Where the fire was contained, a rehabber can pay closer to finished value than any buyer pricing a rebuild.
Why Send That Email at All?
Where We Are Not On Your Side
We are the buyer. Not an adviser, not neutral, not a friend of the file. We benefit if you accept less and decide sooner, and no amount of straightforwardness elsewhere changes that.
Which is why the free public checks matter more than anything on this page. The flood mapping is public. The parcel record is public. Every property we have actually bought sits in the county recorder's index under our entity name. Whether a party needs a real estate licence is answered by the state's free lookup.
An owner who has used those is harder for us to deal with, and we would still rather they did, because a seller who understands their property closes faster than one who has to be persuaded of every line.
The Closing, or Not
If it proceeds: we buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. The contract is not assigned and nobody else is introduced to your property between signature and closing. We are not brokers, public adjusters, contractors or lawyers, and we do not pretend to be.
If it does not proceed, that is the end of it. We do not keep contacting owners who have said no.
What Reaches Us at All
Fire-damaged residential property across Sacramento and the surrounding county, in any condition from smoke to cleared lot. Inside the city, in the incorporated suburbs and on unincorporated county land. Claims open, settled, denied and uninsured. Owner-occupied, tenanted, vacant and inherited.
Where we decline outright it is geography. Beyond this region the framework changes and we would be the wrong buyer.
To start one of these, send an address through any form here. Before you do, work through the obstacles on our page about how the process actually runs, and read the questions on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart.