Even if it’s not in an area of LA County where people build McMansions, the real estate value of land in that region has increased so much over the years that if you end up owning the home it’ll be easy to pay someone to deal with all the issues relating to its being a hoarder house and you’ll still enjoy a profit at the end. I work in commercial real estate and have “junked out” a lot of properties. A straight junk out is not crazy expensive relative to the value of real estate, like for a full house it’ll be a few truckloads and the price will be in the low four figures, but nothing insane. The junk haulers will have it junked out in probably less than 8 hours. When they go after a property that has just been filled with junk they aren’t fucking around, they’re speed pulling stuff out and chucking it into their dump trucks.
There’s a number of scenarios you’re faced with for fixing the house without you personally having to do it:
- Literally sell everything as is, putting the junk out responsibility on the buyer.
- Pay for the junk out, then sell as is.
- Pay for the junk out, then pay to have the carpet ripped up and replaced with the cheapest you can get (this isn’t nearly as expensive as you think, rental properties sometimes do this as frequently as every 3 years and we still make a profit)–I mention carpet because it’s almost certainly ruined in a hoarder house. Then pay to have all the walls repainted and any glaring visible issues like broken windows fixed. This is basically resetting the house to a “clean” slate. It won’t handle certain things that are often very important to buyers, like updating kitchen appliances, relatively new HVAC system, relatively new roof etc.
- Pay for the junk out and full remodel to get it to pristine state.
Depending on your local real estate market, each of these options will have different financials behind them. In a market where land is very valuable and old, run down houses are not, it’s almost certainly going to be the case that the buyer is going to be buying it for the land. In that case your best bet is to literally just sell it as is without even junking it out. Let the buyer worry about demolishing the property.
In other markets where more work is worthwhile, note that when you are in possession of a home through an estate, and want to pay money to get it sold, banks are usually pretty easy to get money from for those endeavors. A free and clear home is a lot of collateral, and they understand the money is needed as part of preparing a home for sale as part of closing out of an estate, these generally aren’t high risk loans for them. So even if this was the route you ended up going, you wouldn’t be paying out of pocket.