Selling a House During an Eviction In Little Haiti? We Can Buy Your House For Cash.

Eleven units, and a seller who had run out of road

This was an eleven-unit multifamily building, and the owner had simply had enough of it. Not one catastrophe — a queue of them, each one needing money and attention before the next could be dealt with.

The recertification was due, which is not a form you fill in. It means hiring engineers, letting them tell you what is wrong with the structure and the electrics, and then paying for whatever they find. There were squatters in the building. There were evictions that had to be run properly, through the court. And underneath all of that, units that could not be rented in the condition they were in, which meant the building was costing money every month instead of making it.

Any one of those is manageable. Together they are a full-time job, and the owner did not want it to be his full-time job. That is a completely reasonable position to take, and it is one we hear often from people who own small buildings.

So it became ours. We got the engineers in and took the recertification through. We moved the squatters out and ran the evictions to the end. Then the work: new kitchens and new bathrooms throughout, a new roof, and the driveway repaved. All of it permitted — which is slower and more expensive than not doing it that way, and it is the only version that leaves a building somebody else can buy or finance later.

The units are rented again. A building like this only works when they are, and getting back to that took every one of those steps.

A duplex with squatters, and the police on speed dial

There were squatters in this duplex, and they were threatening. Not difficult, not awkward — threatening, to the point where the police were called out to the property more than once.

That is a situation an owner genuinely cannot solve on their own. You cannot reason with somebody who is not interested in reasoning, you cannot remove them yourself, and every week that passes is a week of a property you are responsible for, cannot enter, and are frightened of.

We took it on. Evictions were served and seen through properly, through the court, because that is the only route that ends with a result nobody can unpick later. The utilities had to be sorted out as well — that is a detail people forget, and it is often the thing standing between a building and being liveable again.

None of it was quick and none of it was pleasant. But it was ours to deal with from the day we closed, not a list of conditions the owner had to satisfy before we would sign.

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