Need To Sell Your House In Buena Vista? We Buy Houses For Cash.

He owned the house outright, and was still going to lose it

A single family house in Buena Vista, owned outright. No mortgage on it at all. And three years of unpaid property taxes, with code violations alongside them.

People assume a house with no loan against it is safe, and it is not. There was no lender in this picture and no monthly payment anybody had missed. Just taxes that had gone unpaid for three years running. Owning something free and clear does not protect it from what is owed on it, and that is the part which catches people out — they are not behind on anything they signed for, so it does not feel like the kind of trouble that takes a house.

We paid the back taxes. That was part of the purchase rather than a favour — arrears come off at closing, because that is the only way a sale leaves clean title behind it. The practical effect for him was that the thing threatening the house stopped threatening it.

Then the part he actually needed, which was time. He was not ready to walk out of the house. There were belongings to go through and things to get in order before he would be comfortable leaving, and that is not a weekend.

So he set the closing date. Not us. And after closing he had thirty days or so still in the house, with the money from the sale already in hand.

That order matters more than it sounds. Most people move on the proceeds of the move, which forces the whole thing into the wrong sequence — find somewhere, commit to it, then hope the money lands in time. He had the money first and the deadline last, which is the only version of this that lets somebody choose where they are going instead of taking whatever is available.

Six heirs, eight months, and then a second probate

This estate had six heirs. Getting six people to agree on something, sign it, and send it back took eight months on its own — and nobody involved was being difficult. That is simply how long it takes when a family is spread across several states and everyone has a life running alongside it.

Then, partway through, one of the heirs died.

His share now had to pass to his own children, who lived in Alabama, which meant opening a second probate there before anybody could close on a house in Miami. Estates collapse at moments like that. Meanwhile the property taxes were going unpaid, and the family were at real risk of losing the house altogether over an amount that was small next to what it was worth.

So we paid the probate attorney's fees up front, and we paid the back taxes, which stopped the clock running against the family while the second probate went through. Our attorney ran the case. We sent notaries out to the heirs wherever they happened to live, so that nobody had to travel to Miami to sign anything.

And it closed.

Most buyers price probate risk by simply refusing to carry it — call us when it is finished, they say, which can mean a year of waiting. The eight months was never a reason to walk away from this one. The eight months was the work.

A triplex, three tenants, and the one who would not go

We closed on a triplex with three separate tenants living in it. From the moment we closed, all three were our responsibility — which is what buying small multifamily actually means, whatever the listing calls it.

The building needed a full gut — everything, top to bottom — and that is not work you can do around people who are living there. So the renovation could not begin until the building was empty.

Two of the three we settled by agreement. Cash for keys, a date that suited them, and they moved on without any of it turning unpleasant.

The third did not want to leave. We offered her money to move more than once, and each time she turned it down; as far as she was concerned she had earned the right to stay. In the end we had no option but to file an eviction, and she contested it at every stage. It took about three months before she finally moved out, and even then we paid her to go — on top of the attorney and the cost of the eviction itself.

We tell that one because it is the honest version of a promise that every cash buyer in Miami makes in a single sentence. "We will handle the tenants" is not a sentence. It is three months, an attorney, several refused offers and a payment at the end anyway. That is the work you are handing over, and it is worth knowing that whoever takes it has done it before.

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