We Buy Houses in Nassau County, NY

Nassau County is where the American suburb was invented, and it is still shaped by that. Levittown went up starting in 1947 and the pattern spread across the county: small houses on small lots, sold cheaply to young families, almost all of them extended, dormered, finished and added to over the following seventy years. The original owners are largely gone now. What they left behind is a county of houses that no longer match their certificates of occupancy, carrying some of the highest property taxes in the United States, in families whose children live somewhere else.

We have been buying in Nassau since 2000. Below is what we see most, and then every town where we have a page.

The tax bill is why most Nassau sales happen

Nassau County property taxes are among the highest in the country measured against home value, and the school portion is the bulk of it. For a retiree on a fixed income the bill grows faster than the pension. For heirs who inherit a parent’s house, it is thousands a quarter on a building nobody lives in while the estate works through Surrogate’s Court in Mineola.

Nassau also has an unusually aggressive grievance culture, because the county’s assessment history has been contested for decades and a large share of homeowners file every year. Grieving is worth doing if you are staying. It is close to useless if you are selling, because the cycle is annual and any reduction arrives long after you are gone.

The number worth running is the carrying cost of a slow sale. Taxes, insurance, utilities and upkeep on a vacant Nassau house are real money every month, and a listing that takes four months and two price reductions costs you both. Compare our offer against the asking price minus commission, minus the credits an inspection produces, minus four months of carry. That is the honest comparison and we would rather you run it.

Houses that no longer match their paperwork

Seventy years of additions have left Nassau full of houses the town record does not describe. Dormers that turned a cape into a four bedroom. Garages converted to living space. Decks, sunrooms and extensions built across three different decades by three different contractors. And above all, accessory apartments, because a mother daughter arrangement is how a great many Nassau families housed a parent or a grown child.

The Towns of Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay each regulate accessory apartments and each require the certificate of occupancy to describe the house as it actually is. When an appraiser counts a second kitchen or a second electric meter, the lender wants that reconciled before it funds, and legalizing work done in 1988 means a town file search, often an architect, sometimes a variance, and months you do not have.

We buy the house as it actually stands. The permit history becomes ours at closing.

The south shore, flood insurance and what Sandy left

From Island Park and Freeport through Baldwin, Merrick, Bellmore, Wantagh and Seaford, a large share of the housing sits in a FEMA flood zone. A financed buyer needs flood insurance and the lender needs an elevation certificate to price it, and when the lowest floor sits below base flood elevation that premium can break the buyer’s approved payment.

Sandy made it more complicated in a way that has not washed out. Houses repaired in 2012 and 2013 were fixed on a spectrum, some permitted and engineered, many not. Some owners took NY Rising money and elevated, some took it and did part of the work. The town record frequently no longer matches the building, and lenders will not fund across that gap. We buy in the flood zone, elevated or not, permitted or not.

Estates, and the court in Mineola

Nassau County Surrogate’s Court sits in Mineola and every estate in the county passes through it. With a will, the executor petitions for letters testamentary. Without one, somebody petitions for letters of administration, which is slower when the heirs are scattered.

Until those letters issue, nobody can sign a deed. Families routinely accept an offer, start clearing the house, and then discover the closing cannot happen for two or three more months. We can put a property under contract while probate runs and close once the letters are in hand. Our pages on selling a house in probate and selling an inherited home set out the order.

What else we buy here

Houses with tenants in place, paying or not, where a retail buyer would need vacancy and a Nassau County eviction on your calendar. Houses on cesspool and septic in the areas that never got sewers. Buried oil tanks, which the pre 1975 blocks are full of and which routinely kill financed deals. Houses full of sixty years of belongings, including heavily accumulated ones, which you do not have to clear. Houses that need a roof, a boiler and a panel all at once because they were installed together.

What we do not buy is condominium or co operative units. We will tell you that in the first minute rather than waste your week.

Where we buy in Nassau County

Every town below has its own page with the local housing stock, the situations we see there, current home values and the questions sellers in that town ask most. If your town is not listed, call anyway. We buy across the whole county and we can have a written offer to you within 24 hours.