Sell your house fast in Woodhaven, Queens.

Woodhaven is the neighborhood between Richmond Hill and Ozone Park with Forest Park on its north edge and the J train running over Jamaica Avenue down the middle of it. It was built between 1900 and 1930 for the people who worked at the Lalance and Grosjean enamelware factory on Atlantic Avenue, and the houses are what those workers could afford: attached and semi attached wood frames, two and three stories, on narrow lots, block after block of them on the numbered streets. Up toward the park the lots get wider and the frames get bigger. Irish and German families gave way to Italian and then to Dominican, Ecuadorian, Guyanese and Bangladeshi families, and most of the houses have been one family’s for forty years or more.

The typical home value in Woodhaven is around $760,000, up roughly 4.0% over the past year, with houses averaging about 71 days on the market.

The frame row house that needs everything at once

Woodhaven’s attached frames share walls, share roofs and share a century of deferred maintenance. Under the vinyl siding is the original clapboard and often the original wiring. The roof is flat tar with layers on it and it drains onto the neighbor’s. The cellar has a stone foundation that takes water. The boiler is from the 1980s. A financed buyer’s inspector writes four pages and the lender asks for the wiring addressed before closing. We buy frame rows as they stand, price the whole list in the offer, and do the work after closing.

The cellar apartment, and the J train

Thousands of Woodhaven cellars have a kitchen, a bathroom and a tenant, and the houses on the Jamaica Avenue blocks have had the J train over the front door for a hundred years. A cellar is almost never a legal apartment in New York City. The appraiser notes it, the lender wants it removed, and the financed deal ends. A house under the elevated gets a location deduction on top of that. We buy the house as its legal units, price the cellar as a cellar and the train as the train, and the tenant and any Department of Buildings file come with the house to us.

Estates with heirs on Long Island and in Florida

The most common Woodhaven call is a parent’s house. Bought in 1962 or 1975, paid off in 1990, never changed. The children are in Nassau, Suffolk or Florida, there is a Queens Surrogate’s Court file, and the house is full. Agents want it emptied and painted before photos. We buy it as it sits, belongings included, we wait for the letters, and the heirs sign from wherever they live.

Foreclosures, filed in Queens Supreme Court

Woodhaven, with Richmond Hill and Ozone Park next door, had some of the highest foreclosure rates in the city after 2008, and many of those loans are still on the books, modified, in default again, and somewhere on the Queens Supreme Court calendar. That delay is the opening. A house in default with a referee’s sale somewhere ahead still has equity in it, and a cash closing before the sale date pays the lender, stops the interest and the legal fees, and keeps the rest yours.

Where listing still wins in Woodhaven

A renovated frame on a quiet block near Forest Park with legal units and no deadline should be listed, and we will say so. Where a cash sale wins is the attached frame with the four page inspection, the cellar apartment the appraiser will flag, the house under the J train, the estate full of belongings, the mortgage in default, or the owner with a date that cannot move.

What we buy in Woodhaven

Attached and semi attached frame rows, Victorian and larger frames near Forest Park, two and three families, houses with a cellar apartment or an open Department of Buildings violation, houses under the elevated on Jamaica Avenue, mixed use buildings on Jamaica and Atlantic Avenues, houses in foreclosure, estates in any condition, and vacant lots. We do not buy cooperative apartments. If you own something unusual, call anyway.

Under the train, the numbered streets, and the park blocks

Woodhaven is priced by the J train. The houses on Jamaica Avenue and the first block off it on either side take the train in their price, and an appraiser deducts for it. The numbered streets between Jamaica and Atlantic are the center of the market, attached frames priced on the block and the condition. The blocks up toward Forest Park, with wider lots and bigger frames, are the top of the market and sell to families. We buy on all of them and the offer is built from sales on your side of the avenue, with the comparable addresses on the sheet.

What every block shares is the attached frame. Almost nothing in Woodhaven was built after 1930, nearly all of it is wood, and a house that has not been renovated has the same list no matter the block: knob and tube under the siding, a flat tar roof with layers that drains onto the neighbor, galvanized water lines, a stone foundation that takes water, and a boiler from the 1980s. A lender’s inspector writes it all down. We read the same list and price it, and the house closes anyway.

Water bills, violations, and the liens the city attaches

New York City attaches water and sewer charges to the house, not the owner, and a subdivided two family with five households on a frontage meter can carry a Department of Environmental Protection balance in the tens of thousands with a lien sale behind it. Environmental Control Board fines for a sidewalk, a dumpster or a missing boiler inspection attach the same way. Add an open Department of Buildings permit from a cellar job that was never closed out, and a title company has a page of items to clear before any lender will fund. We buy with all of it open. The balances come out of the purchase price at closing, itemized on the offer before you sign, and the open permits and violations become ours to close after the deed records.

Looking just beyond Woodhaven? You can also sell your house fast in Richmond Hill NY or sell a house fast in Ozone Park NY, and you can read about how we buy houses in Glendale NY.

Many Woodhaven homeowners also ask us how to sell a house fast when relocating, sell a house in probate, or sell a hoarder house.