"You Are Going to Lowball Me"
Partly fair, and worth separating into two things.
We buy below what the finished property is worth. That is not a tactic, it is the whole business: we take on the work, the time and the risk of a building nobody else wants to touch, and the gap is what pays for that. Any buyer telling you otherwise is describing something that could not function.
What is not fair is pricing the worst case when the facts are available. On Providence stock the largest single component of a low offer is uncertainty about what the fire reached inside the walls, and that uncertainty is removable.
So How Do I Test It?
"You Will Agree a Price and Then Drop It"
The commonest complaint about cash buyers nationally, and it is usually a symptom rather than dishonesty. A buyer prices from photographs, discovers something in week three, and revises.
On balloon-framed housing that risk is structurally higher than elsewhere, because the thing most likely to be discovered late is exactly the thing photographs cannot show. So the honest answer is that the risk is real here and that it is reducible.
What reduces it: establishing the extent before anyone prices rather than after. We would rather send somebody to look and quote once than quote optimistically and come back.
What Should I Demand of Any Buyer?
"You Are Not Really Local"
Checkable rather than arguable, and you should check it. Search our exact entity name as grantee in the land evidence records for the municipality. What a firm has actually taken title to describes it better than anything on a website.
The reason it matters here is specific. Balloon framing, lead certificates and the Rhode Island regime around pre-1978 housing are not things an investor from elsewhere has encountered. A buyer who has not bought this stock before will either price cautiously or price wrongly, and neither serves you.
What We Are Not Going to Claim
That we are doing you a favour. We are a buyer with an interest that runs opposite to yours on price, and that remains true however carefully this page is written.
That we are the best outcome. On sound stock in the stronger neighbourhoods, where the frame came through and the values carry the work, a rehabber or an owner doing the work themselves will beat us. Our written figure says so when the numbers point that way, and in this city they point that way often.
That any of this is legal advice. The lead regime carries real consequences, including treble damages for tenants under section 42-128.1-11, and a Rhode Island lawyer is the right reader for your position rather than a buyer.
How the Money Works
We buy below finished value, do or arrange the work, and keep the difference less costs. Nothing is charged to you: no fee, no commission, no deduction, no cost for a figure and none for declining one.
Which means we have no interest in files where the gap is not there, and we would rather find that out on day two than in week four.
What We Do Before Quoting
Read the fire report for the origin, because on this stock origin predicts extent. Establish the build year. Check whether the property is a rental and therefore inside the certificate regime. Search the land evidence records for the deed and any encumbrances. Then, where it matters, send somebody to look rather than pricing from a screen.
What We Are
A private buyer of fire-damaged residential property across Providence and Rhode Island, in any condition from smoke to cleared lot, including two and three family houses and converted properties. Claims open, settled, denied and uninsured. Owner-occupied, tenanted, vacant and inherited.
We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. The contract is not assigned. We are not brokers, not public adjusters, not contractors and not lawyers.
Beyond this state the picture changes and we would be the wrong buyer.
To start, send an address through any form here. Before you do, read what an inspection looks for on our page about how the process actually runs, and the sorting question on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart.