Blog
Notes from 25 years of buying houses
Real stories, market insight, and answers to the questions sellers actually ask. Written by Nick York and the EZ Home Buyers team.
Selling a House With an Illegal Basement Apartment in NYC: What Actually Happens, and Your Three Options
An illegal basement or cellar apartment stops a financed sale at the appraisal, the lender, the attorney and the insurer. What the city says, what legalization really involves, and the three ways to sell.
How Long Does Probate Take in New Jersey? The Timeline, and the Tax Waiver Nobody Warns You About
New Jersey probate runs nine to twelve months, but you can sell an inherited house long before that. The real holdup is…
New Jersey Tax Sale Certificates Explained: The Lien, the Deadlines, and How to Sell With One on the House
In New Jersey, a town does not wait for you to pay your property taxes. Once a quarter goes unpaid long enough,…
Inherited a House With a Reverse Mortgage in New York? Your Deadlines and Your Options
A reverse mortgage is easy to live with and hard to inherit. While the borrower is alive and in the house, nothing…
Selling a House During a Divorce in New York: Options, Timing, and a Clean Break
The house is usually the biggest asset in a New York divorce and the hardest one to split, because you cannot cut…
The Long Island Foreclosure Timeline: How Long You Really Have in Nassau and Suffolk
The first foreclosure letter from a New York lender lands like a deadline. It is not one. New York runs one of…
Selling a House With Open Violations in NYC: DOB, ECB, and HPD Explained
Open violations are the reason a lot of Queens and Brooklyn houses never make it to market. The owner knows about the…
Selling a Tenant Occupied House in New Jersey: What the Anti-Eviction Act Really Means for You
Owning a rental in New Jersey stops making sense for a lot of landlords at some point: the numbers thin out, the…
Selling an Inherited House in New Jersey: Probate, the Inheritance Tax, and Your Timeline
Inheriting a house in New Jersey usually means inheriting three problems at once: a property that needs attention, a legal process you…
Selling a New Jersey House With a Tax Lien: Your Timeline and Your Equity
Property tax debt in New Jersey does not sit quietly on a bill somewhere. Once you fall behind, the municipality sells that…
The New Jersey Sheriff Sale Timeline: How Long You Really Have
If you have missed mortgage payments in New Jersey and a foreclosure notice has arrived, the single most useful thing you can…
The New Jersey Exit Tax: What You Actually Pay When You Sell Your House
Sellers hear about the New Jersey exit tax and picture the state charging them a penalty just for leaving. That is not…
Selling a Parent’s House in New York: What an Executor Can and Cannot Do
When a parent passes and their house needs to be dealt with, the legal side and the practical side run on different…
Who Pays Closing Costs When You Sell to a Cash Home Buyer in New York?
“We pay all closing costs” is on every cash buyer’s website, including ours. It is true, but it is also vague enough…
What Cash Home Buyers Actually Pay for a House in Queens
It is the first question almost every Queens seller asks, and most websites dodge it. We will not give you a number…
NY Metro Home Values, August 2026: What We Are Actually Paying
Where prices are moving across Queens, Long Island, Westchester, and Northern NJ. What we are seeing on the buy side. What it…
Selling a Rental Property With Tenants in Place in New York
If you own a rental in New York and you are ready to be done with it, you do not have to…
How Long Does Probate Take in Nassau County? A Realistic Timeline for Selling an Inherited House
If you have inherited a house in Nassau County, the first honest answer you deserve is this: probate here usually takes somewhere…
Cash Buyer vs Realtor: The Money Math, Line by Line
Cash offer looks low, but what's your net after commission, repairs, and carrying costs? We run the actual numbers on a $750k…
What Does ‘As-Is’ Really Mean When You Sell Your House for Cash?
Selling as-is doesn't mean liens vanish or violations disappear. Here's what actually happens with furniture, repairs, and title issues in a cash…
Inherited a house out of state? Read this first.
Probate basics, what executors can and cannot do, and how cash sales fit in. The basics every out-of-state heir should know before…
How to stop a foreclosure auction in 11 days
A pre-foreclosure case from Bergen County and the timeline we worked backwards from. What had to happen, in what order, to make…
What goes into a fair cash offer? We show you the math.
Sellers ask us all the time why our number is lower than what Zillow says their house is worth. Here is the…