In a move that’s becoming more and more commonplace, Colorado real estate brokerage 8z Real Estate revealed this week that it plans to begin buying and selling houses directly from the market.
8z, which operates only in Colorado, becomes the latest company to jump on the iBuyer trend, following in a path laid out by real estate search engines Zillow and Redfin, along with iBuyer platforms like Opendoor, Offerpad, and others.
iBuyers buy houses directly from homeowners, then turn around and sell those houses themselves, offering sellers convenience in exchange for a little off the top on the sale.
Just over a week ago, real estate agency Keller Williams launched its own iBuyer program, and now 8z is joining in.
The company, which has 15 offices in Colorado and did more than $1 billion in real estate sales last year, is calling its iBuyer offering 8z Offers.
The program will give homeowners in the Colorado Front Range region a “cash instant-offer” for their home. According to the company, this includes Colorado Springs, Greater Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, and Greeley.
8z notes the recent rise in popularity in iBuyers in the Colorado region. According to 8z, Opendoor bought more than 100 homes in the Denver area in the last six months.
But the company claims that national iBuyers like Opendoor, Zillow, and Offerpad cannot compete with local companies when it comes to knowledge of the market, which makes 8z’s offering more enticing to Coloradans looking to sell their home.
“National iBuyers have rigid program parameters including age of home, type of home, value of home and geographic location,” 8z said. “Local iBuyers, like 8z Offers, are laser-focused on local market conditions, allowing them to make fair market offers on more expensive and older homes outside of the national iBuyers’ local footprints and parameters.”
According to 8z, its iBuyer expansion is backed by a “multi-million-dollar iBuyer fund,” which will allow the brokerage to hold multiple properties at a time.
The company said that it actually has been making offers on homes in the Front Range region for “a few months,” making more than 50 offers during this time, and closed on its first home purchase earlier this month.
“Like the other major iBuyers, 8z Offers is making fair market value offers,” 8z Real Estate Founder Lane Hornung said. “Even still, the vast majority of homeowners are choosing to list with an 8z Real Estate agent on the open market in order to maximize their sales price and proceeds they pocket.”
According to 8z, the company is partnering with zavvie, which recently launched an iBuyer comparison platform, to make its iBuyer program more widely available to home sellers in Colorado.
Last month, zavvie unveiled the Offer Optimizer, which enables sellers to view multiple offers instantly from iBuyers and compare them side-by-side with information on costs and fees as well as timeline expectations.
“We’ve been helping clients in Colorado manually sort through the maze of iBuyer offers since they entered our market,” said Ryan Carter, president of 8z Real Estate.
“Most homeowners think all instant offers are the same, but they’re not. Most homes are not even eligible for an instant offer,” Carter added. “zavvie Offer Optimizer opens the curtain to reveal unique market insights. Consumers get 100% transparency, multiple offers on their home and the ability to make the best choice that's right for them.”
And now, one of Colorado homeowners’ choices for selling their home is 8z Offers.
