A $146,000 Lien and Demolition Order, Settled for Under 5%

The daughter texted that the house had a lien and demolition order on it, $146,000 on the lien letter, and that the family had decided their only option was to give the property to the city. That was the first message we got.

I’m Raul Bolufe. My company buys inherited houses and heir shares across Texas, and clearing the liens nobody told the family about is most of what we do all week. I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. It is what happened on a small house in West Columbia, in Brazoria County.

The letter that ended the conversation before it started

A mother passed away and left a house to her children. Somewhere along the way a lien attached to it, tied to Social Security, with a number on it: $146,000.

I want you to picture what that number does to a family. The house was small. It sat on a narrow triangle of a lot. Nobody in that family was ever going to see $146,000 out of it, so the math in their heads was simple. The lien is bigger than the house. The house is gone. Let the city have it.

On top of that, the city had a demolition order on the house. So the family was looking at a lien they could not pay and a house the city was planning to knock down. You can see why they stopped opening the mail.

Then one of the daughters texted Marchel on my team, more or less to say thanks, but there is nothing here. Marchel did not agree.

What a lien and demolition order on an inherited house means for you

Here is what most families do not know, and I say it in every one of these articles because it matters more than anything else on this page.

Once you sell your share to us, the lien is ours. The violations are ours. The demolition order is ours. We call the people who hold them, we find out what they will actually take, we negotiate, and we pay it. You never write that check and you never make that phone call.

A lien letter is a starting number. It is not a verdict. Most of these balances have years of interest, penalties and fees stacked on the original amount, and the people holding them would usually rather get something now than nothing for another ten years.

What happened, beat by beat

December. The daughter’s text came in. We ran title. The lien and demolition order were both real. We made the family an offer anyway, because we price the lien in and then go to work on it.

January. The cooperating heirs agreed to sign. The first try fell apart on the night of a storm. The family was spread across three locations, every notary my team called was busy or would not drive in the weather, and the one who would go was an hour and a half away. The woman coordinating for the family was doing all of this from her couch, fresh off knee surgery. We got it done the following week instead.

Spring. One relative in Pearland did not respond to anything. A certified letter sat at the post office for weeks with a notice on her door. So our attorney sent a process server, and then filed a petition. A process server is a human. It is a person knocking on your door and handing you the paper. About five weeks after the filing she signed, and she signed for free. She never wanted money. She had not believed she was an heir or that any of this was real, and once it was real, she was done.

The lien. With the house in our name, we took the lien over and got on the phone. We showed them what the house was worth, what it was going to sell for, and what was realistic. The $146,000 lien settled for less than 5 percent of the number on the letter. We paid it. It came off the house.

The demolition order. This part surprised people on my own team. We called the lien department at the county, told them who we were, and told them we were fixing the house, not abandoning it. They lifted the order. Their reasoning, roughly: they would rather see it fixed than knocked down. That was the whole conversation. Nobody had ever called them to say that.

July. We sold the house. Small deal for us. For the family, it was the difference between handing the house to the city for nothing and getting paid for it.

What the family said

One of them left us a Google review after the cooperating heirs signed. I am going to quote it word for word because it is public and because it says what I could not:

“They helped my family solve a chapter in our life and for that we thank them so very much. No matter what the circumstances they were there for us thanks again.”

That is Letha. I did not write that. She did.

What this means for you

The number on the lien letter is where the conversation starts. It is almost never what gets paid.
A demolition order is a phone call, not a death sentence. Cities and counties want the house fixed. Somebody has to tell them it will be.
Do not give the house away. A family that hands a house to the city over a lien walks away with nothing. This family walked away with cash.
Once you sell to us, the lien and demolition order are ours. We call, we negotiate, we pay. You are out of it.
Send us the letters before you decide anything. The worst version of this is finding out a year later that the $146,000 was really a small fraction of that for someone who knew who to call.

The short version

A mother passed. The house had a lien and demolition order on it, $146,000 on the lien letter. The family planned to give it to the city.
The cooperating heirs signed in January, on the second try, after a storm and a knee surgery.
The one relative who would not respond was served and then signed for free.
We took the lien over and settled it for under 5 percent. We called the county and got the demolition order lifted.
Sold in July. The family got paid instead of getting nothing.

If there is a lien and demolition order on the house you inherited, or a letter with a number so big you stopped reading, call or text me at 936-380-6384 or fill out the form. Tell me the address and who passed away. Liens are a normal Tuesday for my team.

About the author

Raul Bolufe has bought and sold real estate since 2012, closed more than 800 deals, and paid more than 100 heirs for their share of inherited property across Texas and Florida. He hosts the Flipping Miami Podcast. More at raulbolufe.com.