The Order We Check Things In
This is not a sales funnel description. It is the actual sequence, and the order matters because each answer determines whether the next question is worth asking.
First: Which County, and Which City
Not the mailing address — the appraisal district record. The county sets the recording office, the lien and judgment search and the valuation record. The city sets the permits and any overlay. In the metroplex those two boundaries do not line up and cities cross county lines, so this is established before anything else.
Second: The Slab
On post-war North Texas housing this moves the figure more than the visible fire damage does. Whether the foundation is slab-on-grade or pier-and-beam, whether heat reached it, and whether the expansive clay underneath had already moved it. Nothing about a slab is visible, which is exactly why buyers who skip the question discount heavily for it.
Third: What the Lot Supports and What Sits Over It
Zoning, plus any historic or conservation district overlay, plus recorded deed restrictions and any association with architectural review authority. Two of those three add a review step ahead of a demolition permit, and the third can narrow what may be rebuilt.
Fourth: Who Can Actually Sign
Ownership of record, whether that person is living, mortgages, mechanics liens, and whether an heirship situation was ever formalised. This determines your timeline more than anything else on the list.
What Are You Actually Looking for on the Slab?
What Comes Back
A written figure with each line visible: what a finished house on that lot is worth, what building it costs with the slab credited or not, demolition and clearance where that is the route, carrying cost across a realistic permit timeline, and margin. There is no transfer tax line, because Texas does not have one.
Argue with any of it. The line most often wrong on a North Texas file is the foundation, and if you have an engineer's report we do not, it changes the number.
What If the Numbers Say Keep It?
Why Texas Closings Move Faster, and Where That Bites
Texas closes through title companies rather than attorneys on both sides. A clean file genuinely can move quickly, faster than in most of the country.
The flip side is that there is no attorney review period during which a problem would have surfaced anyway. A title defect that would have been caught in week two elsewhere gets found by the title company late here, and by then a schedule has been built around it. Raising liens, heirship questions and unrecorded transfers in the first conversation is worth more in Texas than in a state with a built-in review window.
Things That Never Happen
You are never asked to pay us anything at any stage. You are never asked to clear the lot, board the property, pull an asbestos survey or make any repair first — those are our costs and pricing them is our job. Your claim does not need to be settled. The contract is not assigned to a third party. And you are never asked to leave anything off the seller's disclosure notice, which is covered on our page about North Texas rules and county differences.
If you want to compare figures, compare them — there is no shortage of buyers here. The checks on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart work on us as well as on everyone else.
Common Questions About the Process
How Long Does It Take?
Address to written figure is usually a few days. Agreement to closing can be fast in Texas where title is clean, and slow where heirship or liens are unresolved.
Do I Need to Be in Texas?
No. Out-of-state owners are common on inherited property and remote signing through the title company is routine.
Can I Get a Figure Without Any of This?
Yes, but it will be a range rather than a number. The checks are what turn a range into a figure worth relying on.