Flyhomes review: What to know about this power buyer company

Homeowners who need to buy and sell a house at the same time have long had to choose between shouldering two mortgage payments at once, or paying the costs of moving twice and temporary housing. But no longer. A new class of real estate technology companies has emerged to streamline the process and help homeowners have an integrated dual transaction. Seattle-based Flyhomes is one such company.

Flyhomes helps house hunters buy, sell, buy and sell at the same time, and close more efficiently. But customers of Flyhomes may have a hard time navigating these transactions if they’re new to real estate, and they’ll pay a premium for the convenience.

What is Flyhomes?

Flyhomes is a power buyer founded in 2016 by Tushar Garg and Steve Grossman, who have leveraged their backgrounds in real estate, finance, and machine learning to grow the online real estate brokerage. The company helps homebuyers compete in a competitive housing market by offering trade-in services, cash-backed offers, and home selling and buying guarantees.

How does Flyhomes work?

Flyhomes offers their customers a variety of services. We break them down below:

Buy with Flyhomes

House hunters who are only looking to buy can utilize this service to turn their financed offer into a cash-backed one. These offers are generally considered more competitive to sellers as there is less risk of the sale falling through. Buying with Flyhomes has the additional advantage of no fees for the buyer, since the fees are paid by the seller.

A significant drawback to this service, however, is that buyers don’t have a dedicated buyer’s agent during the process. This can lead to confusion for novice homebuyers, and even has the potential to end in less favorable terms for the buyer, since they don’t have an invested advocate during negotiations at closing.

Sell with Flyhomes

Flyhomes also offers a standard listing service and a no-frills discount broker-adjacent service for sellers. The full listing service offers home sellers home prep and photography at industry standard rates of 2% to 2.5%. While the simpler version offers to list homes without any home prep or photography for as little as 1.25% to 1.5%.

Alternatively, when you work with Orchard, we invest in professional listing prep, saving you over $1,800.

Buy before you sell

This program helps homeowners move into their new house before selling their old one, to minimize the risk of overlapping mortgage payments or finding temporary housing if the closing dates don’t line up. Flyhomes approves buyers for a mortgage before they make an offer, then once their offer is accepted, Flyhomes purchases the home for them. Buyers then have 90 days to purchase the home back from Flyhomes, typically using the proceeds from their home sale.

But this service comes with a cost: Flyhomes charges buyers a daily rental fee for living in the new home, typically $100 to $200 per day. That could mean paying as much as $6,000 to $12,000 in rent if your old home takes 60 days to sell. Depending on how much equity you have built up in your home, that could significantly cut into the proceeds from your home sale.

Curious how much you could make from selling your home? Use our Home Sale Calculator to find out:

Flyhomes closing

This is the company’s title and escrow arm. Customers who use this branch of the company can streamline their transaction by not using third-party services and save on closing fees. For example, Flyhomes charges a flat fee of just $1,000 for escrow, which typically costs 1% to 2% of the purchase price of the home.

How does Flyhomes make money?

Flyhomes makes money from several sources. First, it drives revenue through real estate commissions, as most brokerages do. It also has a mortgage company which charges service fees and interest on the loans it issues, as well as a title and escrow service that makes money by charging standard industry fees.

Is Flyhomes legit?

Flyhomes is a legitimate business that provides brokerage, mortgage, title and escrow services to their customers. They operate in six states nationwide — Washington, California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Texas, and Colorado — and, at the time of writing this article, have bought and sold $3.7 billion worth of real estate.

Flyhomes reviews: What customers think

Flyhomes has favorable reviews on a variety of online forums, including Zillow (5 out of 5 stars), the Better Business Bureau (A+ rating and accreditation), and Trustpilot (4.7 out of 5 stars).

The positive reviews cite Flyhomes’ convenience and breadth of Flyhomes services — many called out the cash offer as necessary in securing their home. While negative reviews report frustrations with the refinancing process and a lack of transparency during the closing process. 

That being said, the company appears to be responsive. At the time of writing this article, Flyhomes had replied to each of the negative reviews on Trustpilot (Zillow reviews does not enable replies and the company had no negative reviews on BBB).

Pros and cons of using Flyhomes

Flyhomes offers a robust array of services for both homebuyers and sellers, but each of these comes with an advantage and disadvantage. Weigh the pros and cons before deciding whether or not to work with this online brokerage.

Alternatives to Flyhomes

Maybe Flyhomes isn’t for you but you’re still interested in working with an alternative to traditional real estate. Below are some alternatives to consider:

• HomeLight: For those who want a dedicated agent, HomeLight provides a robust roster of agents to work with, as well as other services like an instant buyer marketplace. But HomeLight’s catalog of agents and services can be hard to navigate for buyers and sellers who don’t know what they’re looking for.
• Knock: Like Flyhomes, Knock helps homeowners buy and sell at the same time. However, their services can be more expensive than traditional real estate and other real estate tech companies.
• Opendoor: This iBuyer is one of the many companies that buy houses for cash and is a solid option for those who need to sell their house fast with a flexible closing date. However, sellers won’t make as much money selling to Opendoor as they would listing on the open market.

Flyhomes vs Orchard

For homeowners who need to buy and sell at the same time but want the advantage of an experienced and local real estate agent dedicated to your needs, Orchard is a strong alternative to Flyhomes.

Our Move First service helps homeowners buy a new house before selling their old one, without the daily fees Flyhomes charges. Here’s how Orchard works:

1. Tell us about your home and goals.
2. Get a guaranteed offer on your current home, and an interest-free Equity Advance to purchase your new home.
3. Find your dream home with the help of one of our experienced agents local to whatever market you’re looking in — even if you’re buying a house out of state.
4. Make a non-contingent offer on your new home.
5. Move into your new home, while we prep the old one for sale — including completing repairs and renovations at no upfront cost to you.
6. Sell your old home for top dollar on the open market. If it doesn’t sell in 120 days, we’ll buy it from you.

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