Line One: The Debris Assumption
Has anything been tested. If yes, we want to see it and our disposal line reflects ordinary handling for whatever came back clean. If no, we price on the basis that all of it must be treated as regulated material, because that is what the rule requires in the absence of testing.
How to argue with it: commission a survey. On residential buildings of four or fewer units the owner may sample and test rather than hire a consultant, which keeps the cost down. A clean result removes the largest contingency in our figure and in every other buyer's.
Line Two: The Hazard Mapping
Whether the parcel sits in a mapped fault zone or seismic hazard zone, which we check and which your own natural hazard disclosure from purchase usually already answers.
How to argue with it: if we have assumed a mapped zone applies and it does not, tell us and we reprice. If it does apply, the question becomes whether a scope under fifty per cent of the structure's value is realistic, and an architect is better placed than we are to answer that. The rules are on our page covering the debris and the ground.
Line Three: What Survived
Whether the framing came through. Working from photographs we assume conservatively, because the downside of assuming a frame is sound and finding otherwise is large.
How to argue with it: a structural engineer's report. This is the line most reliably moved in a seller's favour, and on older San Jose stock, where dimensional lumber chars rather than failing at connections, it moves more often than owners expect.
Why Encourage Sellers to Spend Money?
Line Four: Finished Value
What the property is worth repaired or rebuilt on that street, which is the line with the most judgement in it and where honest buyers differ most.
How to argue with it: local sale evidence. If a comparable finished house on your street sold for more than we have assumed, that is a straightforward conversation and it changes the number directly.
Line Five: Carrying Cost and Margin
Everything that accrues while the work happens, and what we keep for taking the risk. The margin exists, it is not embarrassing, and it should be proportionate to the risk being taken.
How to argue with it: reduce the risk. Clear title, a resolved hazard question and a structural report in hand genuinely shorten a project, and there is a legitimate argument that they should narrow the margin. Arguments about the other lines are usually arguments about opinion; this one is about facts you can supply.
What Is Not in the File
Nothing charged to you. No fee, no commission, no deduction, no cost for a figure and none for declining one. We make money on the gap between what we pay and what the finished property is worth, less the middle lines.
Which means we have no interest in files where that gap is not there, and in this valley it frequently is not. Where the frame survived and a repair stays under the threshold, keeping the property beats selling it, and the email will say so.
Where Our Interests Diverge From Yours
We are the buyer. We benefit if you accept less and decide sooner, and everything above is still true.
Which is why every line above points at somebody other than us. A certified consultant or your own sampling for the debris. Your purchase disclosure and the city for the mapping. An engineer for the structure. Local sales for the value. The county recorder for what we have actually bought under our entity name.
We are also not brokers, not public adjusters, not contractors and not lawyers. We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. The contract is not assigned.
What We Buy
Fire-damaged residential property across San Jose and Santa Clara County, in any condition from smoke to cleared lot, in the city and in the surrounding cities. Claims open, settled, denied and uninsured. Owner-occupied, tenanted, vacant and inherited.
Beyond this county and this air district the picture changes and we would be the wrong buyer.
To start, send an address through any form here. Before you do, read the order on our page about how the process actually runs, and the sorting question on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart.