Most sellers hear “we buy houses as-is” and think it means they can walk away from everything. The roof leaks, the basement’s full of Aunt Helen’s furniture, there’s an open violation from 2019. All of it just… goes away.
Not quite. When we say we buy your house as-is in New York, we mean something specific. We’re not inspecting the furnace or negotiating over cosmetic repairs. But liens, taxes, and code violations still get handled at closing. The house transfers clean. Here’s what that actually looks like.
What the Contract Language Actually Says
The as-is clause in our purchase agreement says we’re buying the property in its current physical condition. We’ve seen it. We’ve made our offer based on what’s there. We’re not coming back after a home inspection asking you to replace the water heater or repaint the kitchen.
That’s different from a traditional buyer. A retail buyer tours your house, falls in love, makes an offer, then hires an inspector. The inspector finds 40 things wrong. The buyer asks you to fix half of them or reduce the price by $18,000. With us, that doesn’t happen. Our offer accounts for the work already.
But the contract also says the property transfers with clear title, no open liens, current on property taxes. Those aren’t physical condition issues. Those are legal encumbrances. We handle them at closing, but they don’t just disappear because the sale is as-is.
What We Actually Look At (And What We Don’t)
We pull three things before closing: title report, mortgage payoff statement, property tax records. That’s it.
Title report shows us if there are any liens against the property. Unpaid contractor, old judgment, second mortgage you forgot about. We see it, we pay it off at closing from the proceeds. You don’t write a separate check. It just comes out of the sale price.
Mortgage payoff tells us what you owe the bank. We pay that directly at closing. You never touch that money.
Property taxes get prorated. If you’re current, great. If you’re behind three years, we pay the arrears at closing and adjust what you net accordingly.
What we don’t do: inspect the roof, test the furnace, check the electrical panel, measure moisture in the basement, pull permits on that bathroom renovation from 2003. We made our offer assuming the house needs work. We’re not nickel-and-diming you over cracked tiles or a 20-year-old water heater.
What You Can Leave Behind
Furniture, clothing, books, dishes, tools in the garage, junk in the attic. Yes, all of it.
We had a closing last year in Levittown where the seller left a entire household. Couches, beds, a dining room set, boxes of old tax returns, half a garage full of paint cans and lawn equipment. He’d inherited the house from his mother, lived in California, didn’t want to fly back and forth sorting through 40 years of belongings. He left it. We handled it.
That’s what as-is means for personal property. You’re not required to empty the house unless you want to. Most sellers take what matters to them and leave the rest. We’re set up for that.
One thing: hazardous materials are different. If there’s an oil tank (buried or above-ground), that’s a title issue. We deal with it, but it’s not something you can just leave and forget. It has to be disclosed and handled properly at closing.
What Stays With the House at Closing
Appliances usually stay. Refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, washer and dryer if they’re there. Light fixtures, ceiling fans, curtain rods. Anything attached to the structure stays unless the contract says otherwise.
If your grandmother’s chandelier has sentimental value, take it before closing. Replace it with a basic fixture from Home Depot. Don’t assume we’ll know you wanted to keep it.
We’ve had sellers ask if they can take the shed from the backyard. Sure, if it’s not on a permanent foundation. If it’s bolted to a concrete slab, it’s part of the real property. It stays. If it’s a plastic Rubbermaid shed sitting on the grass, you can haul it away.
The contract lists what conveys. If something’s in dispute, we talk about it before closing. Never had a deal fall apart over a washing machine.
When As-Is Doesn’t Mean What You Think
Here’s where sellers get confused. They think as-is means all problems transfer to us. Not true for legal and financial encumbrances.
Open code violations don’t disappear at closing. If the town issued a violation for an illegal deck or an expired certificate of occupancy, that has to be resolved or we negotiate who handles it. Usually we handle it after closing because we’re keeping the property anyway. But it’s documented in the contract.
Same with tax liens. If Nassau County has a $14,000 lien for unpaid property taxes, that gets paid at closing from the proceeds. You don’t owe it separately, but it reduces what you walk away with.
Mortgage liens are similar. If you owe $180,000 on the mortgage and we’re buying the house for $320,000, you net $140,000 minus closing costs. The $180,000 goes straight to your lender. That’s not a surprise. That’s how every house sale works.
The confusion comes when sellers think as-is means they can ignore these things. You can’t. But you also don’t have to solve them yourself. We coordinate the payoffs. You just sign.
One Sale, Three Payoffs, Zero Surprises
We closed on a house in Hempstead two months ago. The seller owed $95,000 on the mortgage, $22,000 in back taxes, and had a $7,500 contractor’s lien from a roof job that went sideways in 2021. The house needed another $60,000 in work. Foundation cracks, old windows, outdated kitchen.
Our offer was $310,000. At closing, the mortgage payoff, the tax arrears, and the lien got paid directly. The seller netted $185,000 and change after all the payoffs and standard closing costs. He didn’t write any checks. Didn’t fix anything. Didn’t clean out the basement. He signed, we closed in 18 days, he moved to Florida.
That’s what as-is actually means. We’re buying the house in the condition it’s in, we’re not asking you to make repairs, and we’re handling the title issues at closing. You’re not responsible for fixing the furnace, but you’re also not walking away from a mortgage or a tax lien. Those get resolved with the sale proceeds.
If you’ve got a property in New York that needs work, has title issues, or is full of belongings you don’t want to deal with, call us at (516) 964-7222. We’ll pull title, review what’s owed, and make you an offer that accounts for all of it. You’ll know exactly what you’re netting before you sign anything.
Where we apply this
The as-is purchase mechanics described above are the same for every house we buy across our service area. We have closed as-is deals on inherited Cape Cods in Bayside, on water-damaged 2-family houses in Levittown, on tired-landlord rentals in Yonkers, and on probate properties in Forest Hills. The contract language is the same. The way we handle title and liens is the same.
For independent context on as-is residential sales, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau overview of as-is home sales is a good starting point.
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