Lafayette Parish and Acadiana
You need this house handled quickly. Here are the four ways.
Speed costs money and money costs time. Which of those you have more of decides which of these four paths is right, and it is worth ten minutes to get that decision correct.
The four paths
Repair it, finance it, rent it, or sell it as-is
Three of these do not involve selling to anybody. They are here because they are frequently the better answer.
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Path one
Repair it and list it
Highest gross price, and the slowest. You are fronting the repair money, carrying the house while the work happens, then carrying it again through the marketing period. Works when the repairs are cosmetic and you can wait.
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Path two
Finance the repairs
A home equity loan, a contractor payment plan, or an insurance settlement released in draws by your mortgage servicer. Works when there is equity and your credit will carry it. Does not work when the clock is set by something outside your control.
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Path three
Rent it out instead
Turns the house into income rather than a sale. It also makes you a landlord, with Louisiana lease law, a five-day notice to vacate, and a rule for possession in the parish court if it goes wrong.
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Path four
Sell it as-is
The condition gets priced in and the house is bought where it stands. Fastest and most certain, and the offer is below what a repaired version of the house would list for. That gap is what you are trading for the certainty.
Where the time actually goes
The buyer is almost never what holds it up
People assume a fast sale is limited by how fast a buyer moves. In Lafayette Parish it is nearly always limited by the title.
- An open succession.
- If the person on the deed has died and no judgment of possession has been signed, nobody can sell yet. This is the single most common delay in Acadiana.
- A co-owner who is not in the room.
- Property held in indivision needs every co-owner to sign. One brother in Texas who is not answering the phone stops the whole thing.
- A lien nobody remembered.
- Contractor privileges, a second mortgage, unpaid parish taxes, a judgment recorded against a former owner.
- A tax sale in the chain of title.
- Louisiana gives a three-year redemptive period on tax sales, and a title examiner will not clear a property until that history resolves.
- A survey problem.
- A fence on the neighbor's side of the line, or a servitude across the back that nobody has looked at since the 1970s.
None of these are reasons to give up on a fast sale. They are reasons to start the title work on day one instead of day thirty. When Chris looks at a property he pulls the conveyance records before he talks about price, because the records decide the calendar.
What keeps costing while you decide
Holding a house is not free
- Mortgage
- Principal, interest, and escrow, every month it is unsold.
- Insurance
- Higher on a vacant house, and several Louisiana carriers will not write a vacant policy at all past a certain point.
- Parish taxes
- Assessed annually. The homestead exemption applies to a primary residence, so a house you have moved out of may be taxed at more than you remember.
- Utilities
- Enough power to keep the air moving, because a closed-up house in south Louisiana humidity grows mould in weeks, not months.
- Deterioration
- A roof leak that was a repair in March is a framing job in September.
Add those up over the number of months a path realistically takes, and the gap between a listing and a direct offer narrows more than most people expect.
The arithmetic
One page, both paths, real numbers
Commission, concessions, repairs, holding costs and net to seller on a worked example, set against a direct offer on the same house.
Questions people actually ask
The five that come up every time
How fast can a house actually close in Lafayette Parish?
A cash purchase can close as soon as the title work is clear, which is usually two to three weeks on a clean title. What stretches it is almost never the buyer. It is an open succession, a lien nobody knew about, a tax sale in the chain, or a co-owner who has not signed. A financed buyer adds an appraisal and an underwriting cycle, so 30 to 45 days from acceptance is normal.
Do I have to make repairs before I sell?
Not if you sell as-is to a buyer who is paying cash. You do if you list on the open market and the house will not appraise or will not pass a lender in its current condition. That is the real fork in the road: the repairs are either paid for by you before closing, or priced into a lower offer.
Is a cash offer always lower than a listing price?
Yes, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling something. The honest comparison is not offer against list price. It is offer against what you actually net from a listing after commission, concessions, repairs, and the months of payments, insurance and taxes you keep making while it sits. Sometimes the listing still wins by a wide margin. Sometimes it does not win at all.
Does a house have to be empty before it can sell?
No. A direct purchase can close with a tenant in place, with your furniture still in it, or with a garage nobody has cleared in fifteen years. Anything left behind is dealt with after closing rather than by you before it. A listing is different: an occupied house has to be shown, which means notice to a tenant and a house presentable on somebody else's schedule.
What if I still owe more than the house is worth?
Then a sale of any kind needs the lender in the conversation, and a short sale is the usual route. It takes longer, not less time, and it needs the servicer to approve. Start with a HUD-approved housing counselor, which is free, before you talk to anybody who wants a fee up front.
No obligation
Send the address and the condition
You will get an honest read on which of the four paths fits, including when the answer is one that does not involve Nexus Home Partners at all.
Check it yourself
Offices and records behind this page
Every claim on this page can be checked against a public source. These are the ones it rests on.
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Louisiana law, in full
Successions, usufruct, indivision, partition and mineral servitudes are all in the Civil Code, published by the state.
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Verify a license
Louisiana licenses are public record. Search a license number before you sign anything with any agent, including this one.
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Insurance complaints
Company lookups, the consumer complaint process, and the state programs behind a stronger roof.
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FEMA flood maps
The current flood zone for a specific address, from the source. Zones vary lot by lot and the maps are revised.
Related
Where to go next
The pages most people read after this one.
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Listing versus cash
The full arithmetic on one house, three ways, with the assumptions written down.
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Inherited property
How a Louisiana succession works, and what has to happen before anything can be sold.
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Roof damage
Five ways to fund a roof, and what a failed one does to your buyer pool.
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Behind on the mortgage
Forbearance, loss mitigation and free counselling, before selling is on the list.
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Resources
How to read the local market, and where the numbers actually come from.
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For agents
If an agent is already involved, the same four paths are open and they stay in the transaction.