The Situation This Page Is About
Somebody sends us an address. We check the tax position, as we do on every enquiry, and find the property was sold at a tax sale two years ago. The person who wrote to us does not know.
That happens often enough here to need a stated policy rather than a case-by-case judgement, because the temptation runs one way and it runs strongly.
What Is the Temptation Exactly?
What We Actually Do
We tell you first, before any number. What the records show, when the sale was, and who appears as the purchaser. That comes as a plain email rather than as part of an offer, because an offer made alongside bad news is pressure.
We tell you to get a lawyer. Redemption rights, possession and the limitation period are legal questions with real money attached, and the person advising you should not be the person buying from you.
We wait. If you want time to work out whether to redeem, take it. A file we lose because an owner reclaimed their property is a good outcome.
We do not approach the tax purchaser. Not while we are talking to you, and not afterwards on the strength of what we learned from you.
Why We Do Not Buy at the Courthouse
Worth being explicit, because plenty of firms in this market do both and there is nothing improper about buying at a tax sale as such.
The problem is doing both at once. A firm that buys from owners and also bids on tax-delinquent property has an interest in the first group's files not resolving. We buy from owners, and we do not bid on properties we have discussed with somebody.
How Would I Check That?
Where the Fire Fits
Most of what we have described is not about fire at all. It is about a property that fell behind, and a fire is simply the commonest reason a Birmingham house falls behind.
The leading Alabama case on redemption costs was itself a fire-damaged rental whose owner stopped paying taxes the year after the fire. That is the sequence, and it is why we check tax status before we look at photographs.
When We Are Genuinely Useful
Where the property is still yours, the damage is serious, and you would rather have certainty than run a rebuild. Where an estate is unresolved and several people are assuming somebody else is handling it. Where the taxes are behind but no sale has happened and time is short.
That last one is the case where a cash sale does something no other route does: it converts a property you may be about to lose into money you keep.
When We Are Not
Over the Mountain and across much of the county, where values carry the cost of repair and the tax position is current, a listing or a rehabber will beat us and the written figure says so.
And where a sale has already happened and you want the property back, what you need is a lawyer and possibly a lender, not a buyer.
The Ordinary Disclosures
We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. We do not assign contracts. Nothing is charged to you at any stage, including if you decline. We are not brokers, not public adjusters, not contractors and not lawyers.
We buy fire-damaged residential property across Birmingham, Jefferson County and the surrounding counties, in any condition. Beyond this region we would be the wrong buyer.
Where to Start
Check the tax status yourself, or send us the address and we will. Then read the search and what each answer means on our page about how the process actually runs, and the sorting question on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart.