Selling your house before foreclosure in Denver

If you have fallen behind on payments in Colorado, the first thing worth saying is who we are, because it changes how you should read the rest of this page. We buy houses. We are not foreclosure advisers, and we are not going to act like it. We cannot tell you what to do about your foreclosure, whether selling would help it, or what any of it will do to your credit. Anybody in our line of work who tells you those things is telling you something they do not get to promise.

Free, unbiased advice on the foreclosure itself exists, and it is the right place to start. HUD-approved housing counsellors do exactly that, free of charge. In Colorado, Colorado Housing Connects provides it, and you can find a counsellor anywhere through hud.gov/helping-americans. They are independent of us and they are not trying to buy your house. That is the point of them.

How the Colorado process works, as a matter of public record

This part is not advice. It is how the process runs in this state, and it is public.

Colorado foreclosures go through the county Public Trustee rather than straight through the courts, and they take months, not days. The path is roughly:

• You fall behind. After missed payments, the lender eventually refers the loan to foreclosure.
• Notice of Election and Demand (NED). The official start, filed with the Public Trustee and recorded publicly.
• A cure period set by statute, running until a fixed number of days before the sale.
• The sale date. If the matter is not resolved, the property is sold at a Public Trustee auction.
• Redemption. A short post-sale window that in practice applies to certain lienholders rather than to most homeowners.

Your own dates and figures are specific to your loan, and your servicer and your counsellor are the two places to get them. Ask your servicer, in writing, for the amount required to reinstate and your exact sale date. Those two numbers are yours and you are entitled to them.

What a cash sale of the house actually is

If, after talking to a counsellor, selling is something you want to look at, here is what it involves and nothing more than that.

A local cash buyer purchases the home as-is, so you do no repairs and no cleanout, and closes through a licensed Colorado title company that pays off the loan directly out of the proceeds. Whatever is left after the payoff and the ordinary costs is yours.

A fair offer should show its work: the fixed-up value, the repairs it needs, and the number you walk away with. If a buyer will not show you that math, keep looking. That advice costs us offers and we would still rather you follow it.

At Cardinal Point we buy Denver-metro houses as-is for cash, and we close at a licensed title company. There is no commission and nothing payable to us. Your ordinary closing costs come out of the proceeds at the table, the same as they would on any sale, and we will show you the whole settlement sheet before you sign anything. If listing with an agent would genuinely net you more, we will tell you so, because for a house in good condition with a patient owner it usually does.

What we will not do: put a date on your foreclosure, tell you a sale to us protects your credit, or suggest we can stop, delay or save anything. Those are your counsellor’s territory and your lender’s, not ours.

If you want to talk to us

You can get a no-obligation written offer on our home page, read what selling as-is means, or call (720) 640-0905. Nothing is decided on a phone call. Whatever we would offer comes to you in writing, with the numbers on it, so you can sit with it or show it to somebody who is on your side.

And if you only do one thing after reading this, make it the counsellor, not us.