Hi, I'm Miles. I buy houses in California.
Here's the short version: one phone number goes to me, I answer my own calls, and I work with a network of private lenders and investor partners who fund every deal I close.
I didn't come from real estate. I came from a job site.
Five years of studying this business before I ever made an offer.
Before I started buying houses, I worked as a surveyor for a large tech company. My job was to assess commercial buildings before remodels. Measure them, map them, figure out what the contractors would need to know before the work started. It wasn't glamorous, but it taught me how to look at a building the way someone who builds things looks at a building — not the way someone who sells things looks at a building. That distinction matters more than it sounds, and I'll come back to it.
I got introduced to real estate investing through a mentor in Riverside who had been buying houses for years. He wasn't selling a course. He wasn't running a coaching program. He was just a guy who had figured out how to do this, and he was willing to explain it to me when I asked questions. That's the part of the industry that doesn't get talked about much — the real teachers aren't the ones selling a $10,000 bootcamp. They're the ones doing the work and happy to pass on what they've learned.
For the next five years, I studied this business while working full-time. On breaks at the job site. On weekends. At night. I read, I watched, I asked questions, I went to industry events, and I deliberately surrounded myself with people who were already succeeding at what I wanted to do.
My first flip was a house in Adelanto, California. The owner had been living with severe hoarding for years and couldn't list the house on the open market — no agent wanted to show it, and no traditional buyer would have closed on it. She needed someone who understood the situation, would close quickly, and wouldn't judge her. We made her an offer and closed in 30 days. That deal is the one I think about when sellers apologize to me for the condition of their house. My first transaction ever was a house most cash buyers would have turned down.
It's been six years since that first Adelanto deal. I've closed cash home buying deals across California, built relationships with the private lenders and investor partners I mentioned earlier, and learned enough to know what I don't know. The one thing I try to bring to every deal is still the same thing my mentor in Riverside brought to me: I'm a person doing the work, willing to explain how it works to anyone who asks.
Which brings me to the part of the story I actually want you to read.
Most of what people hate about cash home buyers is real.
I'm not going to pretend the industry doesn't have a problem. I'd rather name it and tell you how I operate differently.
Over the past six years, I've seen enough bad behavior from other cash home buyers to understand why people are suspicious of us. The scripted phone calls, the aggressive "we'll make you an offer today" pressure, the lowball numbers that drop at the last minute, the way some investors treat desperate sellers like they're opportunities instead of people. All of that is real. And it gives the rest of us a bad name.
So here's what I think is broken about the industry, and here's how I try to do it differently.
Push you to sign before you've had time to think.
I don't ask for a decision on the first call. Take a week. Ask questions. Shop my offer against others.
Give a high initial offer, then drop it after an inspection to squeeze a last-minute discount.
The number I give you on day one is the number at closing, unless you find a problem we both missed.
Hide the formula they use to calculate your offer behind vague language like "current market conditions."
I walk you through the math on your specific house. ARV minus repairs minus carrying costs minus a modest profit. No hidden variables. You can see the full offer formula here.
Treat complicated situations like probate, liens, or tenants like they're the seller's problem to figure out.
I handle the complicated parts of the deal, not push them back to you. That's what you're paying me for, even if you're not writing the check.
Act like the offer is a favor they're doing you.
It's a business transaction. If it works for both of us, we close. If it doesn't, we part ways cordially and I help you figure out the better path.
Philosophy is easy. Here's what it looks like in practice.
Concrete commitments you can hold me to, not vague values statements.
The problem with most About pages is that they list values like "integrity" and "transparency" without ever defining what those words mean operationally. So instead of telling you I value integrity, here's what you can actually expect from the moment you reach out to the moment we close (or decide not to).
I respond within 24 hours, every time.
Usually much faster. If you text me at 8 AM, you'll probably hear back before lunch. If I'm in a closing or on the road, I'll let you know when to expect a proper response. What I won't do is leave you wondering for three days whether I got your message.
The first call is 15 to 20 minutes, not 90.
Some cash buyers turn the first call into a sales gauntlet. I ask enough questions to understand your house and your situation, answer your questions about how I work, and then let you go. If I need more info to put an offer together, I'll tell you what I need and give you time to gather it.
You don't have to decide anything on the first call.
This is a commitment I make explicitly. There's no "this offer is only good for 24 hours" pressure. Take a week. Talk to family. Get a second opinion from an agent. Shop my offer against other cash buyers. If my offer is still the right move for your situation after all of that, I'll still be here.
I text you before I call you.
A phone call out of nowhere feels like pressure. A text saying "got a few minutes to talk about the offer?" lets you respond when it works for you. That's my default mode of contact unless you tell me you prefer calls.
I explain every number before I present it.
Before I give you a final offer, I'll walk you through how I got to it. ARV, repairs, carrying costs, margin. If any of those numbers don't make sense to you, I'd rather spend 20 minutes explaining them than have you accept an offer you don't fully understand.
I'll tell you when selling to me isn't the right move.
If you've got a clean, well-maintained house in a hot part of California and you've got six months to work with, listing with an agent probably nets you more money. I'll say so, and I'll recommend an agent in your area if you want the referral. I'd rather lose your deal and earn your referral later than close a bad-fit deal.
If I make a mistake, I own it immediately.
Deals have moving parts. Sometimes the title company misses something. Sometimes I miscalculate a repair estimate. Sometimes a closing gets delayed because of a county records backlog. When that happens, you'll hear it from me directly, the same day I know about it. No burying bad news, no "we're working on it" stall tactics.
If you change your mind, there's no penalty.
Up until we sign the actual closing documents, you can walk away at any point, for any reason, with zero cost to you. No earnest money deposits that vanish. No signed agreements that lock you in. If you decide this isn't right for you, I'll be disappointed, but I'll wish you luck.
If I can't deliver on something I promised, I'll renegotiate in your favor, not mine.
Here's an uncomfortable promise most cash buyers won't make: if something changes that affects the deal (a lien gets discovered, a structural issue shows up, whatever), I will never come back with a lower offer as a first move. I'll come back with the problem, a proposed solution, and my share of the cost to fix it. You still walk away with what we agreed on, or close to it.
Call me out if I ever slip into pressure mode.
If at any point in our conversation you feel like you're being pressured, manipulated, or talked down to, call me out on it and I'll stop. Most people in sales will tell you they don't pressure you. I'm telling you that if I slip into anything that feels pressuring, I want you to tell me so I can correct it. The goal isn't to close a deal. It's to close the right deal for your situation, with no regrets on either side.
I'm not defined by what I do for money. But it's shaped by it.
A few things about the person, not the operator.
I grew up in San Bernardino County and still live and work here.
I was born in the Inland Empire, and I still buy houses in the same towns I grew up visiting. Rancho Cucamonga is home base, but I've driven enough of California to know that a house in Moreno Valley needs a different kind of conversation than a house in Bakersfield, and both of them need a different kind of conversation than a house in Sacramento. Being from here helps me meet sellers where they are.
I'm married with kids.
I'm not going to put photos of my family on a business website, but it matters to the work. Every deal I close has my family's name attached to it reputationally. Every seller I work with could run into me at the grocery store or around town. That keeps me honest in a way that being a remote, out-of-state investor never would.
I spend a lot of my off-hours teaching other people how to invest in real estate the right way.
I don't sell a course, I don't run a coaching program, and I'm not building a following. But over the last few years, I've had dozens of conversations with people who are just starting out in this business — answering questions, explaining deals I've done, warning them away from bad practices. It's the same thing my mentor in Riverside did for me. I figure the industry gets better one honest operator at a time, and passing on what I've learned is the most direct way I know to contribute to that.
If you've read this far, thanks for giving me your time. I know you didn't have to. And I know that a lot of what's on this page is the kind of stuff most cash buyer About pages skip — the story, the beliefs, the promises — because it's slower and harder to write than "we're the trusted leader in California home buying."
If any of it resonated with you, the next step is whatever feels natural.
Thanks for reading this far.