Who Buys Fire Damaged Houses in Cincinnati

Why This Is the Sorting Question

Where a fire loss reaches sixty per cent of aggregate policy limits, section 3929.86 sends proceeds to the municipality or township, held as security against the cost of removing, repairing or securing the building. It comes back on proof the work is done, or against a contractor's signed estimate.

So on a serious Cincinnati fire there is frequently a sum of money sitting in a municipal account with your name attached to it. Any offer for the property implies something about where that sum ends up, whether or not the buyer has thought it through. The statutory detail is on our page covering the fire escrow.

Is the Fund Part of What I Am Selling?

The Buyer Who Wants You to Recover It First

The cleanest arrangement and the one most likely to close. You pursue release of the fund through the estimate route or a negotiated disposition, they buy the property, and the two things stay separate.

It requires the buyer to price the property on its own merits rather than counting on money that is not theirs. Their number will look lower than one that quietly assumes otherwise, and it is the number more likely to survive.

The Buyer Who Intends to Do the Work

Also coherent. A buyer who will remove, repair or secure the building may expect the fund to follow that work, and the release provisions contemplate proof from whoever completes it.

What matters here is that they say so in advance and it goes in writing. Where the municipality has already commenced work itself, the estimate route closes and the position changes again.

Should I Let a Buyer Take the Escrow Question Over?

The Buyer Who Has Not Thought About It

The commonest of the three, and it is not usually dishonesty. Many perfectly competent investors have never had a loss large enough to cross the threshold and simply do not know the provision exists.

The consequence is the same either way. They will discover it in diligence, at which point the number moves, or they will not discover it and the closing hits a question nobody prepared for.

The question that catches it: what is your plan for any proceeds transferred to the city under section 3929.86. A buyer who works this market answers in a sentence.

The Buyer Who Was Never the Buyer

Some parties sign to buy and sell the contract on before closing. Your property is marketed to a list you never see, and the eventual purchaser inherits the escrow question having never discussed it with you.

The question that catches it: which entity will appear on the deed. A principal buyer gives you a name you can search.

What Every One of Them Should Also Have Checked

Whether the building has been ordered vacated. That starts the licence obligation, with the fee due within thirty days, liability insurance required, and an escalating annual charge reaching $3,500 at five years.

Whether the masonry is load-bearing. Much of the older stock here is solid brick rather than a veneer over frame. A load-bearing shell that survived is worth real money; a veneer standing in front of burnt framing is worth nothing.

Whether there is a party wall. On attached stock, demolition brings duties to the neighbouring structure, and the director takes specified steps before issuing a permit to wreck a building with one.

Which jurisdiction it is in. Hamilton County is heavily subdivided, and the escrow statute reaches townships as well as municipalities.

The Records Worth Pulling

Your insurer's file. Ask directly whether a transfer was made under section 3929.86 and to which subdivision.

The county auditor's parcel record. Names the jurisdiction and the school district, and gives the build year.

The county recorder's index. Search a buyer's exact entity as grantee. What a firm has taken title to describes it better than its marketing does.

The licence lookup. A party marketing your property to others is brokering and needs an Ohio licence. A principal buyer taking title does not.

Where We Fit, and Where We Do Not

We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. We do not assign contracts. Our preference is the first arrangement above: you recover the fund, we buy the building, and the two do not get tangled.

We are frequently not the right answer. On solid masonry that came through the fire, a rehabber can pay closer to finished value than any buyer pricing a rebuild. Where the repair sits below finished value, doing the work yourself keeps the margin and releases the fund at the same time. Our written figure says so when the numbers point there. What happens from there is on our page about how the process actually runs.

Questions About Buyers