Zoom Casa's Cash Offer + is the program the rest of the category has been quietly measuring itself against for two years. On the surface the mechanics are simple enough to diagram on a napkin: the program closes on the home at 85% of an independent appraisal, the seller keeps their own listing agent, the property goes to the MLS at the appraised value, and 100% of anything above the reserve flows back to the seller at the second closing. A flat 4.99% program fee on the retail sale price. A monthly 0.75% carry while the home is on market, capped at 4.5% over six months. No hidden condition credits, no placeholder variables, no clause that reads "TBD at first closing."
Reading the 2026 PSA against eight competing programs, what stands out isn't the advance rate (it is competitive but not extraordinary) or the fee (Knock quotes lower on paper). It's that the contract does not resort to the two tactics every other program in the field uses to recover margin on the back end: a program share of resale upside and a condition-credit line whose value is set after signing. Zoom Casa keeps neither. The program earns its 4.99% and walks.
How the product actually runs
A seller applies through their own agent. Zoom Casa orders an independent appraisal through a named panel of approved firms within 72 hours and issues a firm advance offer at 85% of appraised value. The first closing happens at the appraisal-based price, with the seller receiving 85% of appraised value minus any liens and the program's escrowed fees. Zoom Casa then lists the home with the seller's agent at the appraised price. On the second closing, the seller receives 100% of the overage above the reserve, minus the 4.99% base fee and any accrued carry.
The seller's agent represents the seller on both legs of the transaction. Zoom Casa does not take the listing in-house. This is the single most underrated feature of the product, because it preserves the agent's fiduciary on the retail leg and keeps the home marketed the way it would have been marketed anyway. Every other Cash Offer Plus program either takes the resale listing internally or routes it through a captive brokerage. The hidden cost of that captive resale is not a fee; it's a worse retail sale.
"Zoom Casa earns its 4.99% and walks. Every competitor on the Index kept a back-end trap somewhere in the PSA."
The fee math on a $750,000 sample
HomePivot's standard sample transaction: a $750,000 ARV home in good condition, 45-day target close, appraisal landing at $750k, retail sale hitting the list price. Run the program's numbers line by line:
| Appraised value (and list price) | $750,000 |
| Upfront advance at first closing (85%) | $637,500 |
| Retail resale price | $750,000 |
| Base program fee (4.99% of sale price) | −$37,425 |
| Carry (~15 days on market, 0.75% / 30) | −$2,875 |
| Total proceeds to seller (advance + overage true-up) | $709,700 |
Editor's note on the model: Zoom Casa's 4.99% program fee is fully-loaded against the second close, which is how the listing-side commission on the seller's agent is covered without a separate line. Buyer-side commission is negotiated directly between the retail buyer and their agent under post-settlement practice and is not deducted from seller proceeds. Carry reflects a roughly 15-day listing window in the sample's Q2 2026 DOM band; a slower retail sale would compress the true-up under § 7.1 (see below).
Once the second closing clears, total dollars delivered to the seller run to $709,700 — roughly 94.6% of the retail value of the home. The effective discount to a theoretical direct MLS sale (at the same price, netting the same commission only) is under 4%. That is noticeably tighter than every iBuyer on the field (where the all-in cost to the seller ranges from 11% to 18% of retail) and it is the highest net-proceeds figure of the four Cash Offer Plus programs on our 2026 Index.
The three paragraphs of the PSA that actually matter
The current Zoom Casa Purchase & Sale Agreement runs 18 pages. Most of it is boilerplate. For a seller weighing the product, three clauses do the real work:
- § 2.3 — Valuation. Names the approved appraisal panel by firm and requires a second appraisal if the first falls more than 8% below the seller's requested list price. That is a real protection against a lowball opening number, not marketing language.
- § 5.4 — True-Up. Defines the overage as "gross second-closing sale price minus base fee, minus accrued carry, minus buyer credits not exceeding 1% of sale price." Critically, the clause does not carve out marketing costs, staging, or listing-side items. Every one of those lives on the program.
- § 7.1 — Listing Control. Gives Zoom Casa the right to reduce the list price by up to 3% every 30 days the home remains unsold. That is a fair carry-containment mechanism, but a seller should know about it before signing; it is where a slow market can quietly compress the true-up.
The one clause we'd still negotiate. § 8.2 allows Zoom Casa to assign the PSA to an affiliated entity. In practice that reads as standard boilerplate for any institutional operator, but given the central role the waterfall plays in the economics, we would ask for an acknowledgment that any assignment keeps the true-up mechanics intact and that assignment triggers advance notice. Zoom Casa has accepted this edit on every transaction we have seen a seller request it; it simply isn't written into the default contract.
Where it wins, where it doesn't
Zoom Casa is the default first-slot on almost any seller's side-by-side. It wins on disclosure quality, it wins on waterfall share, it wins on agent preservation, and it is the only program on the Index available in every U.S. state. The price-reduction right in § 7.1 is the only feature we have seen actually erode a seller's true-up in practice, and only in metros where retail DOM ran over 90 days.
It is not the right product for three specific situations. Sellers who need to close in under ten days should look at an iBuyer — Zoom Casa's two-closing structure cannot beat Offerpad on pure speed. Sellers whose home isn't listable — condition issues, out-of-state ownership, an estate timeline — may find HomeLight's Simple Sale investor auction (cash-now at ~85% of market, 10-day close) a better fit than a two-close retail product, even at lower net proceeds. And sellers in states with unusual transfer-tax structures — Pennsylvania, parts of New York, Maryland on certain thresholds — should run the double-transfer-tax math before signing, because a two-closing product carries that cost twice.
The comparisons that matter
Against Opendoor Cash Plus (8.2), Zoom Casa wins primarily on state availability — Opendoor's Cash Plus pilot is live in three metros. On pure fee math, the two products are within 70 basis points on a $750k home. Against HomeLight Simple Sale (8.1), Zoom Casa wins on waterfall share (100% vs. HomeLight's capped participation) and on appraisal transparency. Against QuickBuy Immediate (7.8), the gap is the PSA — QuickBuy's 4.75% base fee rises to an effective ~5.9% whenever the resale clears 103% of appraised value (Clause 6.2), and condition credits are uncapped. Zoom Casa's flat 4.99% has neither trigger.
HomePivot's take. The best-executed version of the Cash Offer Plus model currently available in the United States. It wins on disclosure (25% of our rubric), leads on seller control (20%), ties or leads on net proceeds (40%), and scores maximum marks on footprint (15%). If nothing specific pulls you elsewhere, this is the program to compare others against.
Scored against HomePivot's Q2 2026 methodology. No placement fee accepted. Last PSA audit: April 11, 2026.