Cash buyer (the catch-all term)
Cash buyer is the umbrella term that covers anyone buying a house without a mortgage. iBuyers, franchise networks, local investors, wholesalers, flippers, hedge funds buying rentals, even individual buyers paying cash for their primary residence all qualify as cash buyers.
Because the term is so broad, it tells you almost nothing about what the buyer plans to do with your home after closing. To understand who you are actually selling to, you need to dig one level deeper into their specific role.
Wholesaler (signs your contract, sells the contract to someone else)
A wholesaler puts your home under contract and then assigns that contract to another investor before closing. They do not actually buy your house. They make money by finding undervalued homes and selling the contract to a flipper or rental investor for a $5,000 to $30,000 assignment fee.
From your side it can look identical to a cash sale. The wholesaler signs the contract, the original buyer's name on the contract gets assigned to a different LLC, and that LLC closes on the house. You sign at the same closing table for the same price you agreed to.
The risk with wholesalers is what happens if they cannot find an end buyer. Bad wholesalers tie up your home for 30 days, fail to close, and walk away with no consequences (because the earnest money they put down is small or already refunded). Good wholesalers have a deep buyer network and reliably close. Asking upfront 'are you wholesaling this or buying it yourself' filters honest wholesalers from dishonest ones.
Flipper (buys, renovates, resells on the open market)
A flipper actually closes on your house with their own (or borrowed) money. They renovate it over 3 to 6 months and then list it on the MLS at retail. Their profit is the spread between what they paid and the renovated sale price, minus rehab cost and carrying costs.
Flippers tend to be the most disciplined cash buyers because their business depends on accurate ARV estimates and tight rehab budgets. They usually know the local market deeply because they buy and sell there constantly. The offers they make tend to be at or near the actual maximum a cash investor can pay on a given house.
If a flipper offers you $180,000 and a wholesaler offers you $195,000 on the same house, the wholesaler is either overconfident about what they can assign the contract for, or they are betting on retrade after walk-through. The flipper is usually closer to the real number.
iBuyer (algorithmic flipper at corporate scale)
An iBuyer is structurally a flipper but at corporate scale. Opendoor and Offerpad buy thousands of homes a quarter, do light renovation, and resell on the MLS. They use algorithmic pricing instead of manual ARV analysis, which lets them quote offers fast but also means they only buy specific home types in specific markets where their model works.
iBuyer offers tend to be the closest to market value of any cash buyer category, which is why they appeal to sellers of move-in-ready homes. The trade-off is the service fee (5 to 10 percent of sale price) and the more rigid inspection and contract process.
Buy-and-hold investor (buys to rent, not resell)
A buy-and-hold investor buys your house to rent it out long-term, not to renovate and flip. Their math is different from a flipper's. They care about rental income relative to purchase price (cap rate, cash-on-cash return) more than they care about after-repair value.
On a house in good condition that would generate strong rent for the area, a buy-and-hold investor will sometimes pay more than a flipper because the math works on rental yields, not flip margins. On a heavily distressed house they usually pay less because the rehab cost eats into their cash flow.
Hedge funds buying single-family rentals at scale (Invitation Homes, American Homes 4 Rent) are buy-and-hold investors. They are usually only buyers in specific Sun Belt markets where their portfolio is concentrated.