Line One: What It Is Worth Finished
The starting point and the line with the most judgement in it. What would this property sell for repaired or rebuilt, on this street, in this condition of market.
It is also where offers most often diverge honestly. Two buyers imagining different finished products will produce different numbers without either being dishonest, which is why the useful question to any buyer is what they intend to build rather than what they will pay.
Does a Permit Go in This Line?
Line Two: The Cost of Getting There
Demolition where it applies, structural repair, roof, services, finishes, and the professional fees around them. On older Nashville stock the biggest variable is whether the framing can be retained, because dimensional lumber chars while engineered assemblies come out whole.
This is the line an engineer's report moves most. A report that rules out frame and foundation involvement can take a large contingency out of it, which is why we would rather you commissioned one than that we guessed conservatively.
Line Three: Carrying Cost
Everything that accrues while the work happens. Property tax at the applicable district rate, insurance, utilities, finance and the cost of the time itself.
It is the line most sellers never see and the one that explains why a slower buyer must pay less. A purchase that takes nine months to finish carries nine months of this, and that money comes out of the offer rather than out of goodwill.
Why Does That Matter to Me?
Line Four: Margin
What we keep for taking the risk. It exists, it is not embarrassing, and a buyer claiming otherwise is either lying or about to fail.
What is fair to ask is whether it is proportionate to the risk being taken. A property with resolved title, a known structure and a clear route to a finished product carries less risk than one with none of those, and the margin should reflect that. It is a legitimate thing to challenge.
What Is Not in Any Line
Nothing is 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 property is worth finished, less the middle two lines.
Which means we want files where a real gap exists and have no interest in files where it does not. That is why the email sometimes says the arithmetic favours you keeping the property, and in Nashville it says that more often than in most markets, because a live permit in a zone that issues no new ones can be worth more than any sale.
Where Our Interests Diverge From Yours
We are the buyer. Not an adviser, not neutral. We benefit if you accept less and decide sooner.
So the checks that matter run through public sources rather than through us. Metro holds the zoning and the permit position. The Assessor holds the district, the satellite city and the build year. The Register of Deeds holds what we have actually bought, under our entity name. The state licence lookup shows who is brokering and who is buying.
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 Nashville and Davidson County, in any condition from smoke to cleared lot, inside Metro and inside the satellite cities. Claims open, settled, denied and uninsured. Owner-occupied, tenanted, vacant and inherited.
Beyond this county the rules change and we would be the wrong buyer.
To start, send an address through any form here. Before you do, read the order of losses on our page about how the process actually runs, and the assumptions on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart.