We buy houses across all four counties Aurora sits in.

The four county problem

Aurora spans Kane, DuPage, Will and Kendall counties. Your county determines your tax bill, your assessment cycle, your recorder and part of the closing process. Two houses four blocks apart can carry meaningfully different annual taxes, and because a lender qualifies a buyer on the payment including taxes, that difference changes what a retail buyer can be approved for on your house.

It also means the comparable sale somebody quoted you may have been in a different county with a different tax load, which makes it the wrong comp. We start from the PIN, pull the actual figures, and show you the three closest genuine sales whether or not you sell to us.

Selling as is on the near east side

A large share of what we buy in Aurora sits in the older housing east of the river and around downtown, and the pattern repeats: knob and tube or cloth wiring behind a finished wall, original supply lines, a roof with two layers already on it, a furnace past its service life, and additions somebody built without ever pulling a permit. Good bones, and expensive to bring current.

There is a point below which a retail buyer cannot finance a house and a retail lender will not appraise it. A conventional buyer needs the roof sound, the mechanicals working and the electrical to pass. Under that line the only buyers left are cash buyers, and the listing simply sits while you keep paying for it. We will tell you plainly whether your house is above or below that line, and if it is above it, we will tell you to keep listing.

As is means what it says. No repairs, no cleaning, no staging, no showings, and no unpermitted addition you need to resolve first. Leave what you do not want, take what you do.

Rental licensing, annual inspections and getting out as a landlord

Aurora registers and licenses non-owner-occupied residential property, renews those licences on an annual cycle, and inspects the units, inside and out, year after year. For a landlord who is finished, that is one more annual appointment on a building you have already mentally sold, and an open violation or a failed inspection is one of the commoner reasons an Aurora sale stalls late, after everybody has already committed to a date.

None of it has to be resolved before you sell to us. We buy occupied, month to month or on a lease, and we take the lease as it stands. You do not serve notice, run an eviction, or deliver the property vacant, and the licence, the inspection schedule and any open violation become ours after closing. The city expects a change of ownership on a licensed building to be reported within a few working days, and that is our filing to make, not yours. More on tenant occupied property

Aurora's transfer stamp, and the account that has to be clear

Aurora is home rule and charges its own municipal transfer tax on top of the Illinois state and county layers, and in Aurora the municipal piece falls on the seller. Municipal rates change, so rather than print a figure here, run your price through the calculator and see the three layers separately. Illinois transfer tax calculator

The stamp itself has almost never been the thing that delays an Aurora closing. What delays it is the condition the city attaches to it: Aurora says plainly that it will not issue a stamp until the statement of open accounts is clear, and it asks for several business days to process. Water, sewer, garbage, tickets and building fines all count. Order it early and it is a formality. Order it the week of closing and it is the reason your closing moves.

On anything we buy we cover the seller's side of the stamps and the title company's fees, and any open municipal balance and back taxes come out of the proceeds at closing rather than out of your pocket. The number we put in writing is what you net, before your mortgage payoff and the county tax proration.

Inherited houses, vacant houses and the ones that have been sitting

Aurora has a lot of long-tenure ownership, and long-tenure ownership produces estates. The version we see most often is adult children who moved away, a house that has been closed up for a year, and taxes quietly running the whole time. We can handle the whole transaction remotely, we do not need the house emptied, and we work to the probate court's schedule rather than pushing you to outrun it. More on inherited property

Vacancy is the part worth moving on. An empty house costs you taxes, insurance that may not renew once the carrier learns nobody lives there, a water bill that runs regardless, scrappers, and a winter risk that is not theoretical: a burst pipe in an unheated house can do more damage in a week than the house lost in the previous five years. More on vacant property

If you are behind on the taxes, that is common here and workable, but it runs on a deadline. Once a parcel has been through the annual tax sale, the redemption period governs everything and that date matters more than anything else in the transaction. Bring us the PIN and we will tell you where you stand.

Selling without an agent, and what the number actually nets

Plenty of Aurora sellers start by asking whether they can sell without a realtor. You can. We are the buyer, not a broker, so nobody is representing you, there is no commission on either side, and there is no listing agreement to get out of if you change your mind. No sign in the yard, no MLS photographs, no strangers walking through on a Sunday afternoon.

What matters is the comparison being honest, and the honest comparison is not our offer against a list price. It is our number against what a listing would actually put in your pocket: after commission, after the repairs a financed buyer will demand at inspection, after the concessions, and after however many months of taxes, insurance and utilities you carry while it sells. On a well kept house on the far west side that comparison usually favours the market, and we will say so.

So we run it for you in writing, with the three closest genuine comparable sales attached, whether or not you end up selling to us. If the answer is that you should list, we will tell you that and hand you three agent names. There is no charge for it and nothing attached to it.

Se habla espanol

A large share of the calls we take from Aurora are in Spanish, and it matters that the conversation about the most valuable thing your family owns happens in the language you actually think in. Ask for Spanish when you call and we will arrange it.

Our honest read on Aurora

Aurora is one of the places where the honest comparison genuinely goes both ways. Newer west side houses in good condition usually belong on the open market, and we will tell you so. Older stock with deferred maintenance, tenants, back taxes or title problems is where we do our best work.

See exactly how the process works