Selling a hoarder house in Rhode Island, as-is

Selling a full house without clearing it out

You don't have to empty a Rhode Island house before you sell it. Take the photos and family pieces you want to keep, and in most cases you can leave the rest behind. I Buy Rhode Island Houses buys full houses for cash as they are, so you don't rent a dumpster or hire a cleanout crew first.

Selling to us also keeps it private, with no listing photos online and no open house. JB Jackson has been buying Rhode Island houses since 1975, and a full one doesn't faze him.

When it's a parent's house

If you're clearing out a parent's Rhode Island house after a death or a move into care, you don't have to finish before you sell. Take what the family wants, at whatever pace works, and I Buy Rhode Island Houses can close on the date you pick. Before the closing, it's worth looking through drawers and coat pockets for:

• The will, the deed, insurance policies, and bank and tax papers
• Photos and letters
• Jewelry and keepsakes, including the things people ask about later

If the house is still in your parent's name after a death, the executor needs authority to sell it, either from a power of sale in the will or from a license issued by the local probate court. Executors and administrators selling from an estate are exempt from Rhode Island's seller disclosure statute, which helps when nobody knows what's behind the boxes. If your parent is living but can't handle the sale, whoever signs needs the legal authority to do it, and an attorney can tell you what that takes. How selling a house in probate works.

When the town gets involved

Rhode Island's housing code doesn't let an owner or occupant allow rubbish, boxes or other materials to pile up in a way that can shelter rodents, and stored things are supposed to be stacked at least 18 inches off the floor. If the city or town's code enforcement office cites the house, the notice gives a set time, up to 30 days, to fix it, and you can ask the office to reconsider within 10 days.

A citation doesn't have to stop a sale. You can sell as long as you first give the buyer a true copy of the notice and tell the code enforcement office in writing. If a notice gets recorded in the land records, it binds the next owner until the problem is fixed and any penalty is paid. I Buy Rhode Island Houses buys Rhode Island houses with open code notices, and the cleanup becomes our job after closing.

What you have to disclose

Unless you're an executor or another exempt seller, Rhode Island's seller disclosure applies to a full house like any other. You tell the buyer in writing, before the purchase agreement is signed, about the problems you know of, like pests, leaks, mold or code violations. The law doesn't require you to inspect, so you don't have to move everything to look behind it. Selling to a cash buyer like I Buy Rhode Island Houses doesn't change the disclosure. What Rhode Island sellers still disclose when selling as-is.

What a full house does to the price

A cash offer on a full Rhode Island house accounts for the cleanout as well as the repairs, and a house that's been full for years can hide leaks, pests or wear that only show up once it's empty. An offer from I Buy Rhode Island Houses is less than a full retail sale, in exchange for speed, certainty and taking the house as it is. If you have the time and the help to clear it out and fix it up, listing it will probably net more. How cash buyers figure an offer.

Your options side by side

Three ways to sell a full house in Rhode Island:

What we can handle

I Buy Rhode Island Houses buys full houses for cash anywhere in Rhode Island, including houses with:

• Rooms you can't get into, or a basement nobody's seen in years
• Pests, leaks or mold
• An open code notice from the city or town
• An estate still in probate, or family who live out of state
• Nobody living there for a while

We're JB Jackson and his wife, Robin Adams, lifelong Rhode Islanders rather than a franchise, and we've bought more than 3,000 houses here since 1975.