Any condition, Texas
We Buy Texas Houses in Any Condition — No Repairs, No Inspections
The inspector's report does not kill the deal because there is no inspector. The appraiser does not flag the roof because there is no appraisal. The bank does not refuse to lend because there is no bank. We underwrite to the work, not around it. Foundation, roof, electrical, plumbing, fire damage, code violations, decades of deferred maintenance — bring us the situation and we will tell you in writing what the math actually looks like.
The honest framing
Why retail buyers cannot buy what we can — and why that is the actual problem
Most owners who land on this page have been told some version of the same sentence by an agent or a contractor: "You will need to fix X before you can list." The X changes — the roof, the foundation, the kitchen, the electrical, the code-violation backlog — but the underlying message is the same. The house, as it sits today, cannot be sold on the open market to a buyer using a mortgage. That is usually true. What the agent does not always explain is why it is true, and what the alternative actually is. This page walks through both.
The reason an as-is Texas house cannot sell on the conventional MLS path is not really the condition. It is the financing. Roughly four in five U.S. home purchases are financed with a mortgage, and every single one of those mortgages goes through an appraisal and an inspector — both of whom are paid to find problems and report them to the lender. When they find the problems, the lender refuses to fund. When the lender refuses to fund, the buyer cannot buy. The seller's house has not gotten any worse between the offer and the inspection, but the deal is dead. That cycle repeats every time the property gets back on the market, until the seller drops the price far enough to attract a cash investor or until the seller stops trying.
FHA, VA, and USDA appraisal-required repairs
Government-backed loans — FHA, VA, USDA — carry the strictest property-condition standards in the financing market. An FHA appraiser is not just appraising value; they are inspecting for "minimum property standards." Peeling paint on a pre-1978 home, missing handrails, exposed wiring, an active roof leak, broken windows, crawl-space moisture, missing kitchen appliances, a non-functioning HVAC, or a roof with less than two years of remaining useful life will all generate required repairs. The lender will not fund until the repairs are completed and re-inspected. VA and USDA are similarly strict and in some categories stricter. On a distressed Texas home, the appraisal alone often kills the deal.
Conventional lenders and the inspector's report
Conventional mortgages are looser than FHA on property condition, but they are not unconditional. The lender still orders an appraisal that flags structural issues, active leaks, foundation movement visible from the exterior, and roof condition. Even if the appraisal clears, the buyer's standard inspection — the one paid for out of the buyer's own pocket — almost always finds enough material issues on a distressed home to trigger renegotiation or termination. The buyer either walks, demands a $20K credit, or asks the seller to fix the inspector's list before closing. None of those outcomes works for a seller who needs to sell.
Cash retail buyers are rare and want move-in ready
"Just find a cash buyer" sounds like the answer until you look at who actually pays cash for a Texas single-family home. Most cash buyers are downsizing retirees using the proceeds of a previous home, out-of-state transplants buying a primary residence, or second-home buyers. None of that group is looking for a project. They want move-in ready. The cash buyer pool that will actually write an offer on a distressed home is small, professionalized, and entirely composed of investors — which means the practical answer to "we are selling as-is" is "you are selling to a cash investor," whether you find one directly or after three failed listings.
The "list it and see what happens" tax
The path of least resistance for an agent is to list the home, see how the market responds, and reduce the price every two weeks until something sticks. From the seller's seat, that path costs months of carrying costs (insurance, taxes, utilities), accumulating days-on-market signals that warn off future buyers, multiple rounds of inspection-driven renegotiation, and ultimately the same cash-investor outcome at a worse net price because the listing history has now become a negotiating lever. For some sellers — especially those with no urgency — this path is fine. For sellers on a clock (inherited from out of state, relocating, facing code enforcement, behind on taxes), it is the most expensive path available.
Seller's Disclosure under TREC §5.008
Texas Property Code §5.008 requires the seller to provide a Seller's Disclosure Notice on most residential sales, including known defects, prior repairs, history of flooding, history of fire, structural issues, and a long list of system conditions. On a house with significant defects, that disclosure tells every financed buyer's lender exactly why the loan should be denied. Exemptions exist (estates sold by an executor who never occupied, foreclosure sales, certain investor transactions), but for a typical owner-occupied home, the disclosure is required and it is honest. Selling to a cash buyer who waives reliance on the disclosure removes the middle step.
The "as-is" listing that is not really as-is
Listing as-is on the MLS does not actually free the seller from the inspection cycle. "As-is" in an agent listing means the seller is signaling they will not voluntarily fix things — but the financed buyer's lender still requires the appraisal repairs, the inspector's report still kills financing on structural findings, and the buyer can still terminate during the option period. The seller's "as-is" language is largely a negotiating posture; the financing mechanics underneath have not changed. The only path that actually delivers an as-is closing is a cash buyer who has already underwritten the condition before signing.
None of the above is meant to talk anyone out of listing. If the house is in retail-ready condition and the seller has 60-to-120 days, listing usually nets more on paper. The honest message of this page is narrower: if the condition is the reason the conversation is happening, the financed-buyer market is not the right market, and pretending it is just delays the cash sale you will eventually do anyway — at a lower net price, after carrying the property longer.
What we actually buy
What "any condition" actually means to us
The phrase "any condition" gets used loosely by the cash-for-houses industry, usually as marketing shorthand. Here is the concrete list of condition categories we underwrite on a regular basis. None of these is exceptional in our pipeline; each one is a normal Tuesday. Where a category has its own dedicated guide, we link it — those pillars go deeper on the law, the timeline, and the math.
Decades of deferred maintenance
The owner lived in the home for 30, 40, 50 years and put off a list of items that quietly compounded — original roof, original water heater, original HVAC, original windows, original electrical panel, original kitchen, original bathrooms. None of it failed catastrophically; all of it is past its useful life. The most common condition category on our pipeline.
Foundation issues
North Texas expansive clay soil produces predictable slab movement; East Texas pier-and-beam farmhouses develop sag and rot under the perimeter beams; Houston and the Gulf Coast see post-tension slab failures. We budget pier-and-beam rebuilds, slab leveling, and structural-engineer reports as line items. A failing foundation is a price input, not a deal-breaker.
Roof and storm damage
Hail-tagged structures, denied or partial insurance claims, tarped roofs from the last supercell, roofs at the end of their useful life with active leaks into the ceiling. Texas leads the country in hailstorm frequency and tornado count; roof condition is a standing line item on most of our underwrites.
Water damage and mold
Plumbing leaks behind walls, roof leaks dripping into ceilings, vacant-house slab leaks that ran for months, post-flood remediation that was never finished. We do remediation, replace affected drywall and flooring, and treat the framing. Mold is a price input, not a disqualifier.
Fire damage
Kitchen fires, electrical fires, partial roof loss, smoke and soot damage across the structure. We buy from owners with denied or insufficient insurance proceeds, from owners who collected the claim and never rebuilt, and from owners who inherited a fire-damaged property. We will publish a dedicated fire-damage Texas guide that goes deeper on insurance-proceeds handling at closing.
Hoarder houses
Take what you want, leave the rest — we handle the cleanout. No interior photos required, no MLS listing, single point of contact. See our dedicated hoarder houses Texas guide for the deeper detail on discretion, family dynamics, and how we underwrite the cleanout cost.
Code violations and city liens
Open citations, abatement orders, mowing-and-cleaning fees, structural-condition orders, demolition notices. We pay the liens at closing out of the proceeds. You do not negotiate with the city, you do not bring the property into compliance, you do not write a check. We will publish a dedicated code-violations Texas guide for the deeper municipal-process detail.
Tenant damage and abandonment
Tenants left mid-lease and left the unit in unrentable condition. Tenants stopped paying and the landlord cannot afford another turn. Tenants damaged the property and the security deposit does not cover the work. We buy tenant-occupied, tenant-departed, and tenant-damaged properties — single-family and small multifamily.
Mobile and manufactured homes
Singles, doubles, and triples — with or without the underlying land. Most conventional lenders will not touch mobile homes, especially older units, which is precisely why owners call us. TDHCA Statement of Ownership transfers handled at closing. We buy older units on rural acreage where most operators will not drive.
Long-vacant houses (5+ years)
Burst pipes from the February 2021 freeze, HVAC systems that have not run in years, pest intrusion, roof leaks nobody caught, cosmetic deterioration from sustained closure. See our vacant house Texas guide for the carrying-cost math and the Texas-specific vacant-home insurance gap.
Pre-1978 original systems
Knob-and-tube wiring, cloth-insulated wiring, ungrounded outlets, cast-iron drain stacks, galvanized supply lines, lead solder, asbestos pipe wrap, asbestos siding, lead paint. All of it is standard for homes from the early 1900s through the late 1970s, all of it gets remediated or replaced during renovation, and all of it is in our underwriting math.
Missing kitchen, bathroom, or HVAC
Partial-renovation projects abandoned mid-stream. Kitchen gutted, bathroom taken to the studs, HVAC system removed or stolen. Houses in this condition do not qualify for any standard mortgage product — they have to sell to cash, and that is what we do.
Septic and well issues (rural)
Septic backups from years of overload, failed septic fields requiring full replacement, well pumps that have failed, contaminated wells, systems that never met current code. Standard line items on rural Texas underwrites.
Acreage with mineral or surface complications
Mixed-use rural parcels with mineral-rights splits, surface-use easements, pipeline rights-of-way, oil and gas leases, or utility easements that scare off conventional lenders. We close in cash and do not need a 30-day underwriting cycle to clear those.
Pest and termite damage
Active termite colonies, carpenter-ant infestations, sustained rodent damage in attics and walls, wood-destroying-insect damage to structural framing. We treat, replace damaged framing, and re-treat as part of standard renovation. This is line-item work, not exceptional work.
The math, shown
How we actually price as-is properties
The single thing that separates a real cash-investor offer from a billboard number is whether the buyer will show you the math. Anyone can spit out a price. The question is whether the price is defensible against the comparable sales and the realistic cost of the work. We send a written offer that walks through five inputs in plain language. You can take that document to any agent or any contractor and compare. Here is the framework.
1. After-Repair Value (ARV)
We start with what the property would sell for in fully renovated retail condition, on the open market, in 90 days. This is not a Zillow Zestimate — it is built from three to six recent comparable sales of similar-square-footage, similar-bed/bath, similar-lot, similar-neighborhood homes that actually closed in the last 90 to 180 days, adjusted for differences in upgrade level and condition. The ARV is the ceiling. Everything else is a subtraction from there.
2. Repair budget at investor-retail rates
Itemized cost to bring the home from its current condition to the renovated retail condition assumed in the ARV — roof, HVAC, electrical panel, plumbing stack, kitchen rebuild, bathroom rebuild, flooring, paint, trim, landscaping, permits. The rates are not Home Depot DIY rates and they are not full-tilt general-contractor rates. They are what a working renovation crew actually charges an active investor doing volume, including their own materials margin. On a typical Texas distressed home, this number lands somewhere between $30K and $150K, with foundation-failure or fire-damaged properties pushing higher.
3. Holding costs during the renovation window
Insurance, property taxes, utilities, and financing costs during the four-to-six months between our purchase and the eventual retail resale. On a typical Texas home this runs $4,000 to $10,000, depending on the renovation timeline and the tax rate of the underlying county. It is a real cost — not a fee we invent — and it sits between purchase and resale in any honest underwrite.
4. Resale transaction costs
When we sell the renovated home on the retail market, we pay the standard transaction costs — typically 6 percent agent commission split between listing and buyer's side (negotiable post-NAR settlement, but still the working assumption), plus 1 to 2 percent in closing costs, plus any buyer concessions customary in that market. That 8-to-10 percent tax on the ARV is built into the underwriting before we get to the offer.
5. Margin
We are a business, not a charity. The margin is what we need to make on the deal to justify the capital, the underwriting risk, the renovation execution risk, and the time. We will not pretend this number is zero — anyone who tells you their margin is zero is either lying or going out of business. Texas cash-investor margins on distressed homes typically range from 8 to 20 percent of ARV depending on deal size, risk profile, and certainty of resale.
The offer
ARV minus repairs minus holding minus resale costs minus margin equals the offer. We send the math in writing. The offer does not change after a later inspection — what you sign at contract is what funds at closing. Take the document to a contractor and price out the repair budget independently. Take it to an agent and price out the ARV independently. If our numbers are off, you will see it immediately, and you should walk. If the numbers hold, you have a defensible written offer that is firm.
What is not required
What we do not ask you to do
The friction of a conventional listing on a distressed home is not really about the agent's commission — it is about the dozen-plus tasks the seller has to do before the home can list, every one of which assumes the home is closer to retail-ready than it actually is. Here is the concrete list of things we do not ask for.
No repairs before sale
Roof, foundation, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, kitchen, bathroom, cosmetic — none of it. We take the home as it sits and account for the work in the offer math. If you have been told you need to fix anything before selling, the person telling you that was talking about a financed buyer.
No cleaning, no staging
No deep clean, no professional photos, no staging consult, no decluttering, no haul-away of contents, no curb appeal investment. We do not show the home to retail buyers, so none of the listing-prep work is needed. Leave belongings in place.
No inspector report
We do our own diligence on the walkthrough. There is no third-party inspector generating a 60-page report that becomes a renegotiation lever. There is no inspection contingency — what we sign is what closes.
No appraisal contingency
No bank means no appraisal. The deal cannot die because an appraiser comes in below the contract price. The deal cannot die because an FHA appraiser flags a missing handrail. The deal is funded from our balance sheet, on our timeline.
How it works
Our process for as-is sales
Four steps. The whole process is built around the assumption that the condition of the home is exactly why you are calling us — so none of the steps require you to prepare the home, clean the home, photograph the home, or apologize for the home. We come to it as it sits.
- 1
Tell us the address and the situation — no photos required
Address. What you know about the condition (or what you do not know — that is also a fine answer). Anything filed by the city. Anything in probate. Anything behind on taxes. Anything anyone has told you needed to be fixed before selling. Your timeline. That is the whole intake. No photos. No forms about square footage and bedroom count — we will pull that from the county appraisal district.
- 2
We come walk the property — you do not need to fix anything first
A single member of our team visits the home at a time we coordinate with you. The walkthrough takes 20 to 45 minutes. We do not need every closet open, every system tested, or every defect labeled. We look at roof, foundation, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, structural framing, and cosmetic condition, and we cross-reference what we see against the county records, the lien search, and the comparable sales. You do not need to be present if you live out of state — we can do exterior-and-accessible-interior on our own and adjust the offer for what is not visible.
- 3
Written offer with the math shown
The five-input math from earlier on this page, written out. Comparable retail sales. Repair budget itemized. Holding costs. Resale costs. Margin. The number at the bottom is the offer. You can take the document to anyone — agent, contractor, attorney, family member — and pressure-test it before signing. The offer does not change after a later inspection because we already did the inspection on the walkthrough.
- 4
Close at title in 9 days
The title company opens escrow. They run the lien search and clear any code-enforcement liens, tax arrears, and unreleased prior mortgages at the closing table out of the proceeds. A mobile notary comes to you wherever you live if you are out of state. You sign. Funds wire on the day of close. You do not bring money to the table. You do not write a check to anyone.
Our broader process is documented on the how it works page, and our typical answers to seller questions live in the FAQ.
The hardest cases
How we handle the worst-case conditions
Three categories sit at the edge of what most cash buyers will touch. We close on all three regularly. The math just accounts for it.
Major structural issues
Foundation failure requiring full rebuild on a pier-and-beam home. Slab cracking severe enough that doors do not close anywhere in the house. Sagging floor systems with rotted perimeter beams. Post-tension cable failures on a slab. Roof structural failure where rafters need to be replaced, not just the decking and shingles. We still buy. The math just gets larger on the repair line and smaller on the offer line. We have closed on homes where the structural-engineer report came back with a $40K to $80K rebuild estimate, and we account for that explicitly in the written offer.
Active code enforcement
The city has filed citations. There may be abatement orders, mowing-and-cleaning charges, structural-condition findings, or in the hardest cases an active demolition order on the structure. We coordinate with the city's code department on the lien posture, pay what is filed at the closing table out of the proceeds, and take ownership of the property clean. The seller does not negotiate with the city. The seller does not bring the property into compliance. The seller does not write a check. If the city is on a demolition timeline, tell us at the intake call — we work backwards from that date the same way we would from a foreclosure auction date.
Houses you cannot insure
Vacant-home insurance lapsed and the carrier will not renew. Fire damage so severe the home is uninsurable as it sits. Pre-1978 wiring that no carrier will write coverage on. Roof condition that has been rejected by the standard market. We do not require any insurance from you between contract and close. We carry our own builder's-risk coverage on the property starting at the closing date, and we accept the gap exposure on the contract-to-close window as part of our underwriting. The seller is not on the hook for insuring an uninsurable house.
Statewide service area
Where we buy as-is Texas houses
Statewide. The as-is market is structurally underserved in rural and small-city Texas — there are fewer cash investors willing to make the drive, the financed buyer market is thinner, and the inventory of older homes with deferred maintenance is meaningfully higher. We drive. Each link below walks through the local probate, foreclosure, and market context for that specific city — useful for understanding how our process maps to where your home actually sits.
Cities with dedicated guides
- Bonham
- Whitesboro
- Glen Rose
- Mineral Wells
- Gainesville
- Paris
- Denison
- Canton
- Athens
- Lindale
- Hillsboro
- Corsicana
- Sherman
- Tyler
- Waco
- Wichita Falls
- Granbury
The rural and small-city pages above cover markets where as-is condition is disproportionately common — older housing stock, higher vacancy rates, and thinner financed-buyer demand. If your home sits in one of those markets, the local guide will give you context the statewide page on this URL cannot.
Major metros and surrounding suburbs
- Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex — Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Arlington, Irving, Frisco, McKinney, Denton, Garland, Mesquite, Richardson, and surrounding suburbs.
- Houston metro — Houston proper, Pasadena, Pearland, Sugar Land, The Woodlands, and the surrounding counties.
- Austin and San Antonio metros — Austin, San Antonio, Round Rock, Cedar Park, New Braunfels, Schertz.
- East Texas — Tyler, Longview, Marshall, Nacogdoches, Lufkin, Palestine.
- Central and West Texas — Waco, Killeen, Temple, Abilene, Midland, Odessa, San Angelo.
- South Texas and the Valley — Corpus Christi, Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, Victoria.
Rural property without a city designation works the same way — we drive in. The farther we drive, the more travel and logistics enter the offer math, but the process is identical.
If your situation overlaps with another pillar — inherited property, hoarder conditions, long vacancy, code-enforcement pressure — those guides go deeper on the relevant Texas law and process. See our vacant house Texas guide, the hoarder houses Texas guide, and the broader situations index. For the general cash-offer process, see sell your house.
Any condition FAQ
The questions sellers of distressed property ask
How bad does the condition have to be for you NOT to buy?
Almost nothing disqualifies a property on condition alone. We have closed on homes with active foundation failure, fire-damaged structures with the roof partially open to the sky, vacant rural houses with the back wall missing, septic systems that had not worked in two years, and homes with the kitchen and both bathrooms gutted to the studs. The condition affects the math, not the willingness. The handful of situations where we decline tend to be about something other than the building — clouded title that cannot be cured at closing, a parcel where the cost of land remediation (active environmental violation, contaminated soil) exceeds what the finished home would sell for, or a property where the seller is not actually authorized to sell. If you are not sure whether your house is too far gone, call. We will tell you honestly.
Do I need to clean anything before you come look?
No. The walkthrough is for us to assess the work, not to grade your housekeeping. Leave everything where it is. Do not move furniture, do not stage rooms, do not bag trash, do not haul anything to the curb. We walk through houses with belongings in place every week and we already factor cleanout into our budget. If the home is on the spectrum where cleanout is a meaningful expense — long-vacant property full of contents, hoarder conditions, tenant abandonment with belongings left behind — see our dedicated hoarder houses Texas guide for the deeper detail on how we handle that.
What if the house has been vacant for 5+ years?
Common situation, not a deal-breaker. Long-vacant Texas homes have a predictable cluster of issues — burst pipes from freeze-thaw cycles (especially after the February 2021 statewide freeze), HVAC systems that have not run in years and need full replacement, roof leaks nobody noticed, pest intrusion in the attic and walls, sometimes rodent or bird nesting, and the cosmetic deterioration that happens when nobody opens a window for half a decade. All of that is in our normal underwriting. See our vacant house Texas guide for the deeper walkthrough on what years of vacancy actually does to a Texas home and how the carrying-cost math typically lands.
What about active code violations?
We pay code-enforcement liens and abatement charges at closing out of the proceeds. The title company runs a full lien search on the property before funding, and anything filed by the city — citations, mowing-and-cleaning fees, structural-condition orders, junked-vehicle fines, demolition-order liens — gets cleared at the closing table. You do not write a check to the city. You do not need to bring the property into compliance before talking to us. If the city has posted a demolition order on the property, tell us at the intake call — we work backwards from that date the same way we would from a foreclosure auction date.
Do you buy houses with no kitchen / no bathroom?
Yes. A house that has been gutted partway through a renovation — drywall down, kitchen removed, one or both bathrooms taken to the studs, fixtures pulled, subfloor exposed — is a common condition we underwrite. Owners who started a remodel and ran out of time, money, or contractor patience represent a real share of the as-is calls we get. A missing kitchen disqualifies the home from every standard mortgage product (FHA, VA, USDA, and most conventional lenders will not finance an uninhabitable home), which is exactly why the seller is calling us and not listing on the MLS.
What about asbestos / lead paint / knob-and-tube?
Standard for homes built between roughly 1900 and 1978, and we underwrite to it. Lead paint disclosure is a federal requirement on pre-1978 homes (the Lead-Based Paint Disclosure Rule), and we handle the disclosure on our side at closing. Asbestos siding, asbestos popcorn ceilings, asbestos pipe wrap in older basements and crawl spaces — all of it gets remediated by licensed abatement contractors during our renovation, and the abatement cost is in our offer math. Knob-and-tube wiring, cloth-insulated wiring, and ungrounded two-prong outlets in homes built before the 1960s are equally normal — we replace the panel and rewire what needs rewiring. Same for cast-iron drain stacks, galvanized supply lines, and lead solder. None of these is a deal-breaker; they are line items.
Do you buy mobile homes?
Yes — singles, doubles, and triples, with or without the underlying land. Mobile and manufactured homes are systematically harder to sell on the open market because most conventional lenders and the major mortgage products will not finance them, especially older units or homes without the land. We close in cash. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) Statement of Ownership transfers are handled at closing, including the conversion of personal-property mobile homes to real-property status when that is the cleaner path. We buy older single-wides on rural acreage that most operators will not touch.
How long does the whole thing take?
Nine days from a signed contract is normal once the title company has clear title. As-is condition does not slow the timeline down — we do not need a financing contingency, an appraisal contingency, or a satisfactory-inspection contingency because we have already underwritten the condition before signing. What sets the timeline is title work. If the chain of title is clean, that timeline is realistic. If there is a probate to clear, a lien that needs a release letter, a divorce-decree complication, or an unreleased ancient mortgage, the timeline is whatever title work takes — and we tell you that honestly as soon as we pull the file.
Ready for a written cash offer?
Tell us about your property — we will come back with a fair, no-obligation offer in 24 hours.