What an Agent Knows Better Than We Do
What the house is worth repaired. That is their whole trade, they see the comparable sales as they happen, and they have no interest in the number being low.
We have an interest in it being low, and you should weigh anything we say about finished value with that in mind. Getting that figure from somebody who is not buying is the single most useful thing you can do before talking to any cash buyer, including us.
Then Why Not Just List It?
What We Know Better Than an Agent
What the work costs. We commission it repeatedly rather than estimating it occasionally, and on this stock the estimate is where listings go wrong.
An agent pricing a damaged brick house has to guess at the deduction. A guess that is too low produces a listing that sits, gathers offers that collapse on inspection, and ends up selling for less than an honest cash figure would have paid at the start.
What Neither of Us Can Tell You
Whether the wall is safe. On an unreinforced masonry house that has lost its roof or floors, the masonry has lost what was bracing it, and neither a buyer nor an agent is qualified to say what state it is in.
That is a structural engineer, on site, and it comes before both of us. It also changes both our numbers, because it decides whether the building is repairable at all. The full position is on our page covering the brick and the exemption.
Who Should I Call First, Then?
What Neither of Us Will Raise Unprompted
Your property tax position. It is nobody's job in this transaction and it is worth real money.
Utah's residential exemption takes 45 per cent off the taxable value of a primary residence, and it depends on 183 consecutive days of occupation. A fire that displaces you puts that at risk, and a declaration arriving at a redirected address carries a 90-day response window under section 59-2-103.5(8).
Ask the county assessor about it early. Neither an agent nor a buyer loses anything if you do not, which is exactly why it goes unmentioned.
How the Two Routes Actually Compare
Listing pays more when it works. No buyer's margin comes out of it. It works where the building is repairable, financeable and assessable by an ordinary purchaser.
Selling as it stands pays less and pays certainly. Our margin is the price of removing the work, the timetable and the uncertainty from your side of it.
The gap between them is the cost of the work plus our margin. Where that gap is small relative to the house, selling is reasonable. Where it is large, listing is worth the trouble, and we would rather say so than compete for a file we should lose.
Where That Leaves Us
Useful on badly damaged buildings, on masonry that has lost its structure, on properties an ordinary buyer cannot finance, and for owners who are out of state or otherwise not in a position to run a rehabilitation.
Not useful on a smoke-damaged house in a strong neighbourhood with the frame intact, which is a listing rather than a cash sale, and we will say so in writing rather than making you work it out.
The Ordinary Disclosures
We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. We do not assign contracts. Nothing is charged to you at any stage, including if you decline. We are not brokers, not public adjusters, not contractors, not engineers and not lawyers.
We buy fire-damaged residential property across Salt Lake City, the valley cities and the wider Wasatch Front, in any condition, including buildings an engineer has condemned. Beyond this region we would be the wrong buyer.
Where to Start
An engineer for the wall, an agent for the finished value, the county assessor for the exemption. Then read what to establish first on our page about how the process actually runs, and the sorting question on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart.