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Sell your vacant lot fast in Richmond VA

A vacant lot is a financial drain.

You have to pay taxes on property that doesn’t produce income.

You have to pay to cut the grass.

You have to pay to keep the lot clean of trash.

Sell Your Vacant Lot for Cash - Richmond VA

How A Seller Got Rid of Her Vacant Lot

A seller contacted me about her vacant land.

She was behind on property taxes.

Her home needed repair.

Her husband had some debt that had to be paid off.

Would I buy her vacant parcel in the city of Richmond VA?

She needed to turn that lot into cash, sell that property fast, so that she could take care of those other more important needs.

That lot was an illiquid assest that she needed to sell fast and turn it into cash.

Would I buy her piece of dirt in Richmond’s Church Hill?

She sold her vacant lot

Richmond City has many parcels of land where houses use to sit. Houses were torn down and the ground sits clean and ready for a new house.

This lot was one such empty lot.

She and I agreed to a price to pay for her parcel of land and the paper work went to the title company.

I even agreed to pay all her closing costs.

There were some delays due to title issues, but once the title was cleaned up, she sold her vacant lot and the deal was done.

A happy seller of a vacant lot

The seller sold her lot fast.  She turned that vacant lot into cash to pay off her husband’s bills, clear up some of their debt and make repairs around their house.

I spoke with her again recently and here is what she told me:

Thanks for helping me sell my vacant lot fast.  I am so grateful and relieved that ordeal is over.  You persevered through the title problems and didn’t leave me hanging like a prior investor did. You got it done, and for that, I’m grateful – Ms. Cooper, Richmond VA

Sell your vacant lot

Do you have vacant land to sell? A building lot that could have a house on it?

Sell your vacant lot fast anywhere in the city of Richmond, Henrico County, or Chesterfield County.

Give me a call at 804-719-1489 and I’ll give you an offer or fill out the form at the “Get Offer” button below.

Get an offer on Your Vacant Lot

Good News for a Short Sale Sellers – Tax Break Extended

Source: http://www.housingwire.com/articles/35861-short-sale-tax-break-on-verge-of-being-extended-until-2017

Homeowners who had short sales in 2015 are about to get big break on their taxes, thanks for a massive federal spending bill that’s about to be signed into law by President Obama.

The Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Act was set to expire at the end of 2015, and without an extension, any mortgage forgiveness achieved in a short sale would have been counted as income for homeowners whom banks allowed to sell their homes for less than the amount of their mortgage during 2015.

But an extension to the Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Act was included in the fiscal 2016 federal appropriations and tax relief bill, which passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate on Friday.

The bill is now awaiting the signature of President Obama, who reportedly will sign the bill into law on Friday, meaning that borrowers who had short sales in 2015 are about to be able to breath a little easier.

Read more.

Short Sales are something that I have stayed away from

Sell your vacant land in Richmond VA

Richmond Virginia Vacant Lots Sell for Cash

Vacant land is a financial drain.

Your vacant lot sucks money out of your pocket.

In Richmond, you have to keep your parcel of vacant land clear – that means removing trash, keeping the grass cut, and keeping the right of ways clear.

If you cannot do the work yourself, you will be spending money.

Then there are real estate taxes.

On your income taxes, you don’t get depreciation deductions on your land like you would a rental house.

Each month, a vacant parcel of land is taking a portion of your income away from you and you will not get it back.

It is a hole that vacuums money out of your pocket.

Sell your vacant land in Richmond Virginia

In recent months, I’ve been buying vacant land that is ready to have a house put on it.  It takes about 4 months for a house to be built.

Sometimes those houses are resold to someone buying a house for the very first time (increasing property values in the neighborhood).

Other times, those houses are rental properties for tenants who want to live near where they work.

I’ve been focusing on Church Hill, an area of Richmond Virginia that is experiencing pockets of renovation.

In the last 12 months, sellers have sold their buildable pieces of vacant land for cash.

These are vacant building lots where sellers have:

  • Fallen significantly behind on real estate property taxes.
  • Inherited, but never gotten rid of the financial drain.
  • Turned their lot into cash that they need for something different.

Factors that influence value of vacant land

Sometimes selling dirt (vacant land) is hard.

Richmond has some complex rules regarding whether a house can be built on that vacant lot.

Setbacks from neighboring properties, lot size, road frontage, alley access, off street parking – these are just some of a variables that will influence the price you will get when you sell your vacant lot.

Sometimes the terrain is not right for a house – it’s too steep, too expensive to fill in, the soil is not stable.

Sometimes the neighborhood doesn’t justify new construction – houses that sell for 1/3 the price it takes to build one.

Sometimes the distance from a stream will determine how much of vacant lot is buildable.  I almost bought one lot that had a stream on it and these rules made it 100% unbuildable, unless I built it on stilts.  There was no value in doing so.

Sell your vacant land for cash

If you want to sell your vacant lot for cash in Richmond and areas, give me a call at 804-719-1489.

Or tap the get our offer button below and let’s start a conversation about your vacant lot.  There is no obligation to sell it to me.

 

How to sell your handyman special in Richmond Virginia

You want to sell your handyman special.

Your house is ugly.

Your house is out of date.

Your house needs more repairs than you care to imagine.

Perhaps you have smoked in the house and the walls are stained.

Perhaps you had really old pet who has soiled the flooring so bad that guests won’t enter your house.

Maybe the rotten bathroom floor has finally caved in from rot and you can’t even enter your bathroom.

I buy handyman specials.

I buy those types of houses.

I want to buy your handyman special.

I can close on a date of your choice, usually in as little as two weeks.

A recent handyman special

We Buy Handyman Specials

Last week, I closed on the purchase of  a handyman special.

I found it on the MLS and it was over 60 days on market.

The sellers were anxious to sell.

A vacant house can attract all sorts of problems and headaches for an absent owner.  (Including bullet holes).

If your handyman special sits too long, it will attract vandals.  That is what happened with this property in a decent working class neighborhood.

All of the replacement windows got shot out or broken.

Storm doors were destroyed.

I’ve had frozen pipes burst, gutters stolen, and even found a homeless man sleeping in the living room of the vacant house.

It was a handyman special

Because of it’s condition, it took me nearly two weeks to have the property inspected and form a budget for fixing it.  I couldn’t close on it in less than three weeks, mostly because of the time I needed to look at the scope of repairs.

The windows had been broken by vandals.

The house had been boarded up.

The storm doors had fallen off.

Light fixtures had been stolen.

The kitchen needed to be redone.

The two bathrooms needed complete makeovers.

All told, the amount of repairs on this house will approach nearly $45,000 dollars over the next 6-8 weeks.

What you need to do to get a fast offer on your handyman special

I buy handyman special houses.

The amount of repairs needed doesn’t really matter to me as long as that budget fits the formulas I use in my pricing.

If you want a fast offer on your handyman special, please call me directly at 804-719-1489 during normal business hours on the east coast.

How I made a Fast Offer on a Handyman Special

One of my ads for buying handyman specials caught the attention of a realtor who gave me a call with a house she swore she couldn’t sell.

I answer my own phone (unlike other We Buys Houses Fast companies).    The agent told me that her seller just wanted to get rid  of the house.

I made a fast offer of the handyman special.

We followed a pretty good process:

1.  We talked about the handyman property in its current condition.

2.  We talked about expected repairs that the realtor knew about.

3.  I ran the expected numbers through my formulas and found a price that worked for the seller and myself.

4.  I put house under contract with a 14 day inspection period and had signatures within 24 hours.

5.  I had the house inspected for repairs and to confirm the repair budget.

I made the offer on the house based on numbers and expected condition.  If you want to sell your house fast, we can follow a similar process based on expected repairs.

Fast Offer on Handyman Fixers

My Fast Offer for that house wouldn’t work.

Here is where it became impossible for me to buy this handyman special.

The inspections revealed all sorts of defects that the real estate agent didn’t know.

  • A 200 ft2 addition was added to the house without a permit.
  • The foundation of the addition was built on piers.
  • Siding and boards on the side of the house were touching the ground and rotting.
  • The electrical panel, installed outside, was not weather proofed and installed upside down.
  • Illegal (not to code) roof repairs required a complete roof replacement.
  • The kitchen floor slopped in two directions and could only be fixed from above (no crawlspace) by ripping out the existing tile floor and replacing it.

Many estimates of repair were exceeding 30,000 and one estimate went as high as 80,000 to fix.

HandyMan_Special10

In this case, the seller hadn’t told the realtor of all the problems, and the realtor had no clue of the amount of repairs.

With the amount of repairs exceeding the amount in my calculations, we agreed to part ways.  The seller had no room to cut the price because of a loan on the house.

If you are a seller and want to sell your house fast, you need to be realistic about the amount of repairs.  In this case, I was unable to buy this handyman special, even though they got our offer fast.

What you need to do to get a fast offer on your handyman special

I do buy handyman special houses.

The amount of repairs needed doesn’t really matter to me as long as that budget fits the formulas I use in my pricing.

In order to have finished with the agreement to purchase this house, the price would have needed to go down another 30,000 to allow it to fit into my formulas.  This would allow for extreme circumstances if the un-permited section had to be torn and rebuilt.

If you want a fast offer on your handyman special, please call me directly at 804-719-1489 during normal business hours on the east coast.

Or fill out the form below.

Get an offer