Inland Empire

Cash home buyers in the Inland Empire — and how to tell the real ones apart.

Search “cash home buyers” here and you will get dozens of results that all look identical: the same promises, the same stock photography, the same phone number that goes to a call center in another state. Some of those are companies that will buy your house. Some are companies that will sign a contract with you and then try to sell that contract to someone else. This page explains the difference, gives you the questions that expose it, and is honest about what a cash offer actually costs you. We are a family-owned buyer working only in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, and we would rather you choose us with your eyes open.

Get My Cash Offer or call/text (951) 618-8881

The short version, if you just want the offer.

Send the address and an honest description of the house and you get a written offer within 24 hours, priced after we have walked the property rather than before. No commissions, no fees, we cover the typical closing costs, and no price re-trades — the number we agree on is the number you get at closing. We can close in as little as 7 days through a local title company, or later on your timeline. And if listing with an agent would genuinely net you more, we will tell you so; that answer costs us business regularly and we would rather give it than not.

The Inland Empire is bigger and stranger than a national buyer’s model expects.

Two counties, and they are not small ones. San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the contiguous United States — 20,105 square miles, 24 incorporated cities, about 2.21 million people as of 2025. Riverside County adds 28 more cities across roughly 7,200 square miles. Between them they hold well over four million residents, and the housing runs from 1890s Victorians in downtown Riverside to 2024 tract homes in Beaumont, from mountain cabins above 7,000 feet to five-acre homestead parcels in Wonder Valley to homes in Palm Springs where the land underneath is leased rather than owned.

National cash-buying platforms are built to price the middle of that distribution and decline the rest. Read their own published rules and you find the same exclusions over and over: no manufactured homes, no pre-1950 construction, nothing with significant foundation or structural problems, nothing tenant-occupied at closing, nothing on large acreage, nothing outside a narrow price band. In this region that is not a small slice of the market — it is a large share of the houses whose owners most need to sell quickly.

That is the whole reason a local buyer exists. We are not better than a national platform at pricing a clean 2015 build in Eastvale; an algorithm may well beat us there, and you should take the higher number. We are better at the house with a failed leach field in Lucerne Valley, the inherited duplex in Colton with a tenant who is not leaving, the Big Bear cabin no carrier will insure. Our market report is refreshed monthly with cited county-level figures if you want to see what the open market is actually doing before you talk to anyone.

There are four kinds of “cash buyer” here. Only one of them is buying your house.

First, a buyer who takes title with its own funds and owns the house afterward. That is us. Our name goes on the deed, the money is ours or our lender’s, and if we are wrong about the repair cost we eat it. Second, a wholesaler: someone who signs a purchase contract with you and then markets that contract to actual buyers for a fee, without ever taking title. Third, an iBuyer — a national platform making algorithmic offers, with a published service fee and a condition-adjustment step that can move the number after inspection. Fourth, an institutional rental operator buying to hold and rent.

None of those four is inherently dishonest, and a wholesaler who tells you plainly what they are doing is doing nothing wrong. The problem is that all four use the same words in their advertising, and only one of them is structurally committed to closing. When a wholesaler cannot find an end buyer, the deal you were counting on quietly falls through — usually at the end of a long inspection period, usually after you have already made plans around the money.

You cannot tell them apart from a website, and California does not currently draw the line for you. Business and Professions Code § 10131 defines a real estate broker as someone who, for compensation, does certain acts “for another or others” — which is exactly why a wholesaler argues they are a principal buying for their own account rather than an agent. Assembly Bill 1850 in the 2025–2026 session would change that, requiring a license for wholesaling activity and written disclosure to the owner that the person will not take title; as of its last action it was held under submission in the Assembly Appropriations Committee in May 2026, so it is a pending bill and not law. Until something like it passes, the diligence is yours to do — so here is how to do it in one phone call.

Six questions that separate a real buyer from a hopeful one.

Ask these of us and of everyone else you talk to. A buyer who takes title will answer all six in a minute without getting cagey. A buyer who intends to assign your contract will start explaining why the questions do not matter.

Our answers, for the record: Roman Home Solutions or an entity we control takes title; we do not require an assignment clause and will strike one if it bothers you; we will show proof of funds before you sign; earnest money is real and goes into escrow at a local title company you can call yourself; we walk the property before we price it, which is why our number does not move afterward; and we do not need your permit, your rental income, or your lender’s appraiser to cooperate.

Who exactly will be on the deed — the name in the ads, or someone else?
Does the contract contain an assignment clause? Will you remove it?
Can I see proof of funds before I sign anything?
How much earnest money, and which escrow or title company holds it?
Do you price before or after physically walking the house?
Under what circumstances would your offer change after I accept it?

The honest math: a cash offer is a discounted offer.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is managing you. We buy below what a fixed-up version of your house would list for, because that gap is where the repairs, the holding costs, the resale costs, and our margin live. Every cash buyer in this region operates the same way; the ones worth talking to just say it out loud. One of the largest national franchises publishes it in their own materials — that their offers are typically discounted below market value in exchange for speed and convenience. Same admission applies to us.

What you get for that discount is real, though, and it is worth putting a number on in your own head. No commission. No repairs, no cleaning, no landscaping, no staging. No showings and no strangers in the house. No financed buyer whose loan falls apart in week five. No appraisal that comes in low and reopens the negotiation. No inspection report used to claw back $18,000. A closing date you choose, and certainty about the amount, which is worth a great deal when there is a court date or a trustee’s sale on the calendar.

When does listing win? When the house shows well, you can afford to wait sixty to ninety days, and nothing about your situation is urgent. In that case a traditional listing will usually net you more than any cash offer including ours, and we will say so on the phone. If you want to compare the national cash options on their own published terms, we have read their fee structures and exclusion lists line by line: Opendoor, We Buy Ugly Houses / HomeVestors, and Offerpad each have a page here. We wrote those pages to be accurate rather than flattering to us.

What happens to your house afterward — and the law that makes us say so.

We are a buy, fix, and resell business. That is not a secret and it should not be presented as one. On qualifying deals we can also structure a profit-share second payment, so you have a shot at an additional amount out of the profit when the house is resold — never guaranteed, and exactly how it would apply to your house goes in writing before you commit to anything.

California now regulates that resale directly, which is worth knowing because it tells you something about who you are dealing with. Civil Code § 1102.6h — added by Assembly Bill 968 and applying to offers accepted on or after July 1, 2024 — requires a seller of a single-family residence who accepts an offer within 18 months of taking title to disclose the room additions, structural modifications, alterations, and repairs made since acquiring the property that were done under contract, to name each contractor and pass along their contact information for work above the dollar threshold the statute borrows from Business and Professions Code § 7027.2, and to provide copies of any building permits obtained — or identify who obtained them.

In other words: the next family who buys the house we buy from you gets a written record of what we did to it and who did the work. We think that is a good law. It also means the rehab we describe to you when we explain our number is the same rehab we will have to put in writing later, which is a useful thing for you to know about any buyer’s credibility.

If you are behind on payments, a specific statute applies to buyers like us.

This is the one place where California has written rules aimed squarely at cash buyers, and every seller in default should know they exist. Under Civil Code § 1695.1, “residential real property in foreclosure” means one-to-four dwelling units, one of which the owner occupies as a principal residence, against which a notice of default has been recorded. A buyer acquiring title to that property is an “equity purchaser,” subject to the Home Equity Sales Contract Act.

In that situation — and only in that situation — Civil Code § 1695.4 gives the seller a statutory right to cancel the contract with an equity purchaser until midnight of the fifth business day after signing, or until 8 a.m. on the day scheduled for the sale of the property, whichever comes first. Cancellation does not require any particular form; written notice to the address in the contract that indicates the seller does not intend to be bound is enough. That is the law describing itself, not a guarantee we are offering, and it does not apply outside those circumstances.

We mention it because a buyer who does not know that statute exists, or who reacts badly when you bring it up, has told you something important. If you have a recorded notice of default or a scheduled trustee’s sale, our foreclosure page walks through the California timeline in detail, and the Riverside County version covers the local recording and postponement mechanics. Send us the notice with the address and you will get a straight answer about whether we can close inside your window. This is general information and not legal advice — if a sale date is set, talk to a HUD-approved housing counselor or an attorney as well as to us.

Both counties, every situation, and what we take off your plate.

We cover all of Riverside County and all of San Bernardino County, cities and unincorporated areas alike, and each county has its own hub page here because the mechanics genuinely differ — permitting authority, transfer tax inside the City of Riverside, which courthouse hears probate, whether a short-term rental permit survives a sale, lease land in the western Coachella Valley. If your family owns property in both counties, that is one conversation, not two.

On situations: inherited and probate houses, foreclosure and default, divorce, houses needing major repairs or with fire damage, rentals with tenants in place, job relocations, and houses full of a lifetime of belongings each have a dedicated page with the actual law and the actual local procedure. There is no situation here we will refuse to look at, and there is no judgment in the conversation.

On logistics: take the photographs, the documents, and whatever else matters to you, and leave every other object where it sits — the cleanout is ours after closing, at no cost to you. If heirs or an ex-spouse are spread across several states, documents get signed in front of a notary near wherever each person lives and the title company divides proceeds exactly as instructed. There are three different ways we can structure a purchase depending on your equity and whether a mortgage is staying in place, and the how-it-works page lays all three out in plain language. And the three things we will not move on: written offer within 24 hours, no price re-trades, and an honest answer about whether listing would net you more.

Local Knowledge

Riverside and San Bernardino Counties — 52 cities and everything between them.

Riverside, San Bernardino, Fontana, Moreno Valley, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Corona, Rialto, Jurupa Valley, Menifee, Hemet, Murrieta, Temecula, Lake Elsinore, Wildomar, Perris, Eastvale, Norco, Beaumont, Banning, Calimesa, San Jacinto, Canyon Lake, Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Indio, Coachella, Desert Hot Springs, Blythe, Chino, Chino Hills, Upland, Montclair, Colton, Highland, Grand Terrace, Loma Linda, Redlands, Yucaipa, Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley, Adelanto, Barstow, Big Bear Lake, Twentynine Palms, Yucca Valley, and Needles — plus every unincorporated community in between. We work here and nowhere else, which is the entire reason we can price a mountain cabin, a desert homestead, and a West End tract home without guessing.

Common Questions

Answers before you even ask.

Are you actually the buyer, or will you sell my contract to someone else?

We are the buyer. Roman Home Solutions or an entity we control takes title, and we own the house after closing. We do not require an assignment clause, and if one appears in a contract and it bothers you, say so and we will strike it. This is the most important question to ask any cash buyer in this region, because a company that plans to assign your contract depends on finding an end buyer — and when they cannot, your sale falls through late in the process.

How much below market value is a cash offer?

It varies with condition, location, and what the house needs, and we will not pretend there is a single percentage — anyone quoting you one before seeing the property is guessing. What we will do is walk the house, price the work line by line, and show you the arithmetic behind the number so you can judge it. Every cash offer in this region is discounted below fixed-up retail value; that gap covers repairs, holding costs, resale costs, and margin. If the discount is not worth the certainty in your situation, list it, and we will say so.

Which cities and counties do you cover?

All of Riverside County and all of San Bernardino County, including the unincorporated areas of both — roughly 27,000 square miles and 52 incorporated cities, from Blythe to Chino Hills and from Needles to Temecula. Each county has its own page here covering the local mechanics. We deliberately do not work outside these two counties, because being able to price a specific street is the whole product.

Do you buy houses that national cash buyers turn down?

That is most of what we do. The national platforms publish their exclusions, and they consistently rule out manufactured and mobile homes, older construction, significant structural or foundation problems, fire and water damage, large lots, tenant-occupied homes that will not be vacant at closing, and properties outside a narrow price band. Add mountain homes that can only be insured through the California FAIR Plan, High Desert properties on wells and septic, homestead cabins in the Morongo Basin, and Coachella Valley homes on leased land, and you have a large share of this region’s housing that an algorithm will not touch.

How fast can you actually close?

A written offer within 24 hours of hearing about the property, and closing in as little as 7 days through a local title company — or later, on your timeline, if a slower close is what you actually need. Two honest exceptions: a probate sale moves at the court’s pace, and a home on leased land in the western Coachella Valley moves at the pace of tribal and Bureau of Indian Affairs approval. In both cases we tell you the realistic timeline up front rather than promise a week we cannot deliver.

Do I pay any fees, commissions, or closing costs?

No commissions and no fees, and we cover the typical closing costs. Unpaid property taxes, liens, and mortgage payoffs are settled out of proceeds at closing rather than out of your pocket beforehand. You should still read any contract you are handed and confirm what it says about costs — including ours. A buyer who discourages you from reading the contract is telling you something.

What if I am behind on payments or a trustee’s sale is scheduled?

Send us the notice along with the address and you will get a straight answer about whether we can close inside your window. One thing worth knowing: when a notice of default has been recorded against an owner-occupied one-to-four-unit home, the buyer is an “equity purchaser” under California’s Home Equity Sales Contract Act, and Civil Code § 1695.4 gives the seller a statutory right to cancel until midnight of the fifth business day after signing or 8 a.m. on the day scheduled for the sale, whichever comes first. That is the law, not an offer we are extending, and it applies only in those circumstances. Our foreclosure pages go through the full timeline.

Will you tell me if I should not sell to you?

Yes, and it happens regularly. If the house shows well, you have sixty to ninety days, and nothing about your situation is urgent, a traditional listing will usually net you more than we can offer, and we would rather be the company that told you than the company that hoped you did not find out. Read the market report first — it is refreshed monthly with cited figures on prices, supply, and how long homes are actually taking to sell here.

Have a different question? Ask us directly — a real person answers.

Where to go next

Ask us the six questions. Then decide.

Send the address and an honest description of the house — condition, tenants, deadlines, whatever is going on. You get a written offer within 24 hours from the family that will actually be buying it, and a straight answer about whether selling to us is the right move at all.

Get My Cash Offer (951) 618-8881

Free and no-obligation. See how it works — including all three ways we can buy.

This page is general information for Inland Empire homeowners, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Laws and figures change; always confirm how they apply to your situation with a qualified professional. Statutes, pending legislation, and published competitor terms change. Civil Code §§ 1102.6h, 1695.1 and 1695.4 and Business and Professions Code §§ 10131 and 7027.2 are summarized here in general terms, and Assembly Bill 1850 of the 2025–2026 session is a pending bill that is not law; confirm current text at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov and confirm any national buyer’s terms on that company’s own site before relying on anything here. Roman Home Solutions is not a licensed brokerage and is not affiliated with Opendoor, Offerpad, or HomeVestors / We Buy Ugly Houses; nothing on this page is legal, tax, or financial advice.