Honest answers about selling property with legal, tax, or title issues.

Yes. In most cases the back taxes get paid out of the sale proceeds at closing—the title company sends the payoff directly to the county and you walk away clean.

If the equity in the property is short, we can often negotiate with the county or absorb the shortfall ourselves as part of the deal. The short answer: back taxes do not stop the sale.

It depends on your state, but the rough range is 1–3 years of delinquency before the county can foreclose. Texas can foreclose in roughly a year; Michigan and Washington take about three.

Counties usually send several warning notices first, so if you’ve started receiving them, you still have time—but the clock is real.

This is more common than people think, and it doesn’t mean the property is stuck. For federal liens, we can apply for a discharge (IRS Form 14135) that releases the lien from the specific property. For county tax liens, we can sometimes negotiate a reduced payoff or use a conditional release.

You don’t pay any of this out of pocket—we handle the paperwork and absorb the cost as part of how the deal closes.

Yes—up until the auction date you can sell privately, use the proceeds to pay the taxes, and stop the foreclosure entirely. The closer the auction, the tighter the timeline, which is why a cash buyer who can move fast (no lender, no appraisal) is usually the only realistic option.

Call us as soon as you get the notice and we’ll tell you honestly whether there’s enough time.

Yes. The IRS will release its claim against the specific property (a Certificate of Discharge, Form 14135) when it’s paid from sale proceeds—or when the home is worth less than the lien and we apply for a discharge anyway.

Your other assets and other IRS obligations are separate; this only clears the lien from the house being sold. We handle the filing and the back-and-forth with the IRS.

Usually you can’t close until probate is granted, because the title needs to transfer through the court first. But you can absolutely start the process—get an offer, sign a purchase agreement contingent on probate, and have everything ready to close the day the court issues Letters Testamentary.

The exception: if the property was held in a living trust, in joint tenancy with right of survivorship, or with a transfer-on-death deed, probate isn’t required at all.

It varies a lot—typical range is 6 to 24 months. Florida often closes in 3–6 months, Texas can be faster with independent administration, California tends to run 9–18 months.

We can usually start working in parallel during probate so the sale closes within days of the court granting authority.

Not always. If the home was held in a living trust, owned jointly with right of survivorship, or had a transfer-on-death deed, the title passes outside of probate. In Texas, small estates and cases more than 4 years past death can often use an Affidavit of Heirship instead.

We can look at how the deed is currently titled and tell you within a day or two whether probate is needed.

The estate is responsible for keeping the property maintained, insured, and current on taxes and utilities until the sale closes. In practice that money comes out of the estate’s account, or—if there are no estate funds—heirs sometimes front it and get reimbursed at closing.

Every month a probate sale drags out, those carrying costs eat into the heirs’ net. That’s why we try to move quickly.

Yes, and a lot of our first conversations are with non-executor heirs trying to understand their options.

You don’t have signing authority on your own—that belongs to the executor or court-appointed administrator—but you can absolutely scope out what the property is worth, what the title looks like, and what the family’s options are. Then everyone goes into the next family conversation actually informed.

For a voluntary sale, yes—every co-heir on title needs to sign. If even one refuses, the remaining heirs’ option is a partition lawsuit, which asks a court to force a sale and split the proceeds.

We’ve worked with families on both sides of this—the ones who agreed, and the ones who needed the court to break the tie. Both can close.

You have a few options short of a lawsuit: a sibling buyout, a delayed sale (everyone holds for an agreed period), or a partition action as the last resort.

Often what unsticks the conversation is real numbers—when everyone sees what the property is actually worth, what the carrying costs are, and what each share would be, it gets easier to decide. We can provide that picture for free.

The other heirs can demand fair-market rent (the occupying heir owes their share of it), seek a formal accounting, or—if it stays unresolved—file a partition action that includes “ouster” damages for blocking the other heirs from the property.

This is one of the most common situations we see. Our role is usually to give the family an honest valuation so the conversation stops being theoretical.

You agree on a current value (usually with a formal appraisal), the buying sibling secures the funds (cash, a conventional refinance, or a specialized estate loan), and at closing the others get their pro-rata share. Title transfers via a quitclaim or executor’s deed.

We help families with the valuation piece even when there isn’t going to be a sale to us—knowing the real number is the hardest part.

Yes. The lien gets paid from the sale proceeds at closing and the buyer receives clear title.

If proceeds don’t cover the full lien amount, options include negotiating a reduced payoff with the creditor (often possible on older judgments), or selling to a cash buyer who can absorb the shortfall as part of how the deal is structured.

Two main categories. Voluntary liens are debts you agreed to—mortgages, HELOCs, refinances. Involuntary liens are placed without your consent—property tax liens, IRS or state tax liens, mechanics liens from unpaid contractors, judgment liens from lawsuits, HOA liens, child-support liens.

All of them have to clear before a property can be sold with a marketable, insurable title.

Yes. The judgment creditor gets paid from the sale proceeds before any money goes to you. Many creditors will negotiate a reduced payoff, especially on older judgments—they’d rather take cash now than wait on a lien that may never collect.

We’ve negotiated these payoffs on behalf of sellers as part of the closing process more times than we can count.

Five common paths: pay or negotiate with the contractor for a release; send a written demand to release; post a lien-release bond that substitutes for the property; petition the court to expunge after the statutory deadline has passed; or file suit to vacate an invalid lien.

If you’re selling, we can usually handle the contractor negotiation at closing without you fronting a dollar.

Usually yes. Most mortgage lenders won’t fund a property with unresolved liens, which is why traditional buyers walk away from these deals.

That’s where a cash buyer like us makes a difference—we don’t need lender approval, so liens become a closing-table problem (which we handle) rather than a deal-killer.

A cloud on title is any unresolved document, claim, or recording issue that makes ownership questionable. Common examples: an old mortgage that was paid off but never recorded as released, a missing heir who never signed off after a parent’s death, a misspelled name on a deed, an unrecorded easement, or a recording error from decades ago.

Title insurance won’t cover the property and lenders won’t fund it, which means it can’t sell on the open market until it’s cleared.

A quiet title action is a civil lawsuit that asks a court to declare you the rightful owner and extinguish all other claims. Uncontested cases usually take 3–6 months and cost $1,500–$5,000 in legal fees. Contested cases can run a year or more.

When we buy a property with title issues, we handle the curative work—sometimes through a quiet title action, sometimes through a faster path—and the legal fees come out of our side, not yours.

A lien release is the simpler path: the original creditor signs a document saying “we got paid, this lien is satisfied,” and it gets recorded. That works when the creditor is still around and cooperative.

A quiet title action is the heavier path you use when the creditor is gone, defunct, deceased, or unresponsive—or when the defect is structural (a missing heir, a defective old deed, an adverse possession claim). We figure out which path is needed before anything moves forward.

Curative work is the legal cleanup that makes a property marketable again—obtaining lien releases, recording correction deeds, filing affidavits of heirship, tracking down missing parties, or filing quiet title actions when nothing else works.

When you sell to us, we cover all of it. None of the curative costs come out of your pocket. The fees are part of how our deal model works.

Yes. Most states allow as-is sales as long as you disclose what you know in writing.

Traditional lender-financed buyers usually can’t close on a property with open violations—FHA, VA, and most conventional loans reject these properties. That leaves cash buyers, which is what we do. We absorb the violation cleanup as part of the deal.

Yes. Condemnation doesn’t strip your title or your right to sell—it just means the property is unsafe to occupy as-is.

We buy condemned homes regularly, handle the abatement work after closing, and typically close in 7–14 days. The longer a condemned property sits, the more daily fines accumulate, so faster is almost always better.

No. Cumulative code fines and municipal liens are part of what gets resolved at closing or shortly after. We’ve closed on properties with five-figure violation balances.

Sometimes the city will reduce or waive penalties when the property changes hands to a buyer who’s actually going to fix it. That negotiation is our problem, not yours.

Four steps. (1) You tell us about the property—by form on the homepage, by phone, or by email. (2) We pull the title and county records and figure out what would need to clear. (3) We give you a real, honest number in writing. (4) If the offer works for you, we close on your timeline.

Usually 14–30 days, longer if probate is involved. No fees, no closing costs to you, no obligation at any step.

Most clean deals close in 7–14 days. Deals with title work usually take 21–45 days, depending on what’s involved. Probate situations move as fast as the court allows—sometimes weeks, sometimes months.

We’ll tell you a realistic timeline upfront, not an aspirational one.

It will be honest. We tell you what the property is worth once the legal work is done, minus the cost of that work and a small margin for us. We show our math.

If a different buyer or a traditional sale would net you more, we’ll tell you that—even if it means we don’t get the deal. The whole point of working with us is that the situation is hard enough already; you don’t need a buyer adding spin to it.

No. We buy as-is. You don’t have to repair, clean out, paint, or even remove belongings.

We’ve bought houses full of furniture, houses with no roof, houses that hadn’t been entered in five years, and houses with active code-enforcement cases. Whatever shape it’s in, leave it.