Sell your rental property, occupied or vacant, without listing it
Whether a tenant is still paying rent or the house has sat empty since the last one moved out, we buy it as it stands. No turnover, no showings, no waiting for the right season.
You can sell a rental property in Colorado without listing it, occupied or vacant. A cash buyer takes the house as-is; if a lease is in place, it comes with the house, and the deposit follows under the tenant notice Colorado requires. Expert Cash Buyers, based in Fort Collins, sends one written offer within 24 hours and closes at a local title company on your date.
Why landlords sell to us instead of listing, and when they should not
A rental sale goes wrong on the open market in two different ways. If the house is occupied, the buyer pool shrinks to investors, showings have to fit around someone else’s life, and a buyer’s lender starts asking about the lease. If the house is vacant, you carry the mortgage, the taxes, the insurance and the utilities with nothing coming in, and you pay for the turnover before the first photo is taken. A house that sits empty through a Northern Colorado winter is a frozen pipe waiting to happen, and many insurance policies narrow their coverage once a property has been unoccupied for a while. Either way, the years of ordinary tenant wear are the first thing a buyer’s inspector writes up.
We’re Amy and Jenny, two owners in Fort Collins who buy houses for cash and close at a local title company. We buy rental property across Larimer, Weld and Boulder counties and the Denver metro, vacant or, depending on the house and the lease, often occupied. Occupied, the lease comes with the house, the tenant stays, and the prorated rent is settled at closing so the next check comes to us. The security deposit follows too, and Colorado gives the seller sixty days after closing to hand it to us and mail the tenant written notice, which we build into the closing. Vacant, we take the house with whatever the last tenant left behind: the furniture in the garage, the stained carpet, the appliance that stopped working in March. One walkthrough, no repairs, no cleanout, no sign in the yard.
Here’s the honest trade-off. A direct cash offer is below what a vacant, freshly painted rental might bring on the open market, and our written offer shows you exactly how far below and why. When the house is empty, in good shape and the market is moving, listing can net more even after commissions and a few months of carrying costs. If that’s clearly your situation, we’ll say so before you sign anything. If the numbers are close, we lay both paths side by side and let you decide.
We help Colorado owners whose rental property is…
- Occupied, with time left on the lease. The lease comes with the house exactly as written. Depending on the house and the lease, we can often buy with the tenant in place: the tenant stays and the rent redirects to us, and on the closing date we become the landlord and give the tenant the notice of new ownership Colorado requires within one business day. You still finish the deposit handover described below, and then the landlord job is off your hands.
- Vacant since the last tenant left. The utilities are still in your name, the turnover never got done, and every month it sits is another mortgage payment with no rent against it. We buy it empty and as it stands.
- Behind on rent, or in a dispute. Late rent, unpaid utilities, damage beyond the deposit, a holdover past the lease end. We price the house as it is and handle the tenancy going forward after closing. Rent already owed to you before closing stays your claim unless we agree in writing to take it, and an eviction already filed stays in your name unless the court substitutes us.
- Worn down by years of tenants. Flooring, paint, cabinets, a furnace and roof that were due before the last lease started. We buy as-is with no cleanout, and the turnover is priced into the offer, not done by you.
- Owned from out of state, or managed by a company you no longer want to pay. You haven’t seen the house in years and the statements keep shrinking. One closing, handled by phone and email with a local title company, ends it.
- Held with partners, or inherited along with everything else. Every living owner signs and proceeds are split at title according to your written agreement, with nobody flying in for showings. If the house is still in a deceased owner’s name, the estate needs Letters before anyone can sign, which the inherited house page explains. We can buy more than one property on the same date or on staggered dates.
Is it ever a good idea to sell rental property?
Yes, and the people who say never usually own rentals that still make sense. A rental is worth keeping when the rent covers the costs with room to spare, the house is in a condition you can maintain, and you have the time or the manager to run it. It’s worth selling when one of those three has quietly failed. The rent no longer covers the mortgage, the taxes, the insurance and the repairs. The house needs a roof or a furnace that a year of rent won’t pay for. Or the calls and the turnovers have become a job you didn’t sign up for, and the equity sitting in the house would do more somewhere else.
The math to run is simple and it isn’t the sale price. Take a year of rent. Subtract the mortgage, the taxes, the insurance, the management fee if you pay one, the average of what repairs have actually cost you, and a month or two of vacancy. What’s left is what the house pays you for your time and risk. Then look at the equity: what the house would net after a sale, whichever way you sell it. If the annual return on that equity is thin, and the house is getting older rather than newer, the case for selling is made. If the return is strong and the house is sound, keep it.
Where we fit is the second half of that math. We walk you through how we reached our written offer, from the after-repair value and the repair and turnover budget to our costs and margin, so you see what the house nets you as it stands, with no commissions and your closing costs covered. That’s a real number you can put beside a listing estimate and beside another year of landlording. The offer math page walks through the method in full.
Read more: How Much Do Cash Buyers Pay for Houses? Our Offer Math, Shown →
- Rent no longer clears the mortgage, taxes, insurance and repairs with room to spare.
- A major system is due: roof, furnace, sewer line, foundation work, and a year of rent won’t cover it.
- Vacancy or turnover has become routine rather than occasional.
- You own it from a distance and the management fee is eating what’s left.
- The equity would work harder somewhere else, or you simply want the job to end.
Should you sell the rental occupied, or wait until it is vacant?
If you’re listing with an agent, vacant almost always shows better and sells for more, because the buyers who pay the most want to move in, and their lenders want a clean file. That’s the whole argument for waiting. Against it’s everything waiting costs: the months of carrying the house empty, the turnover work, the listing period, then a buyer’s inspection and loan. If the lease ends soon and the house would show well with paint and a cleaning, waiting can still be the right call, and we’ll tell you when it is. Just don’t count on the lease-end date to hand you an empty house: Colorado’s for-cause rules can require written notice and a waiting period even at the end of a term, as the next paragraph lays out.
If you’re selling to us, the occupied-or-vacant question often disappears, depending on the house and the lease. In Colorado the lease comes with the property, so when we buy it occupied we take the tenant and the lease terms at closing and you don’t have to end the tenancy to sell. You do send the tenant one written notice: the law makes whoever holds the security deposit transfer it to us and mail the tenant notice of the transfer within sixty days of closing. If you want the tenant out before a sale for your own reasons, the rules are specific and a Colorado attorney should confirm them for your lease. Since 2024 a landlord needs a lawful cause to end or refuse to renew a covered tenancy; selling a single-family home, townhome, duplex, triplex or condo is a no-fault ground only at the end of the lease term and only with at least ninety days written notice, and you can’t re-rent it for ninety days afterward unless you list it for sale. Tenancies under a year, owner-occupied homes of up to three units, employer housing and short-term rentals are exempt and follow the older notice periods, which for a month-to-month tenancy run from ninety-one days for a long tenancy down to as little as a day for a very short one. The occupied sale page covers the lease, the deposit and the rent proration in detail.
A vacant house is the simpler purchase and the more urgent one. Every month empty is a mortgage payment, a tax bill and an insurance premium with no rent against them, and an unheated house in January is a risk to the plumbing that no offer can undo. When you want to sell a vacant house fast, the shortest path is usually the direct one, and it runs in this order:
Read more: Sell a House With Tenants: Leases, Notice, Deposits, and Closing →
- If your rental is already empty, don’t spend a season fixing it up for a listing you aren’t sure about.
- Get one written number within 24 hours.
- Put it beside the agent’s estimate, net of commissions and carrying costs.
- Choose with both in hand. If listing clearly wins, we’ll say so.
What does a tired landlord actually hand over at closing?
Less than you think. At the title company you sign the deed and the settlement statement, and the rest is paperwork we have already collected from you: the lease if there’s one, the deposit ledger, the rent roll, and which utilities are in whose name. The security deposit shows as a credit from you to us on the settlement statement so the money follows the obligation, and within sixty days of closing the deposit is transferred to us and the tenant is mailed written notice of the transfer with our name and address, which is what Colorado law requires and what releases you from the deposit. The current month’s rent is prorated to the closing date. Prepaid rent is handled the same way. If the house is vacant, none of that applies and the closing is a deed, a statement and a set of keys.
You don’t hand over a clean house. We buy as-is, which means the carpet stays stained, the garage stays full, the appliance that quit stays where it is, and the yard the last tenant stopped mowing is our problem on the afternoon we close. Take what you want from the property and leave the rest. The as-is page explains how we price a house that has had years of tenants and no turnover, and why that number is often better than the cost of doing the turnover yourself. As-is covers the condition, not the disclosures: you still tell a buyer about problems you know of that they couldn’t reasonably find, and you still give the notices Colorado and federal law require, including lead-based paint for a house built before 1978, known meth history, the water source, any special-district or HOA notice, and known radon. Most of those notices ride in the contract and its attachments, which the buyer’s or seller’s side prepares, not the title company. The title company closes the sale and handles title and the settlement statement; it doesn’t write the contract or supply your disclosure.
What we do need from you is administrative. If the property has an HOA, bring the rules on rentals and any outstanding dues so the title company can clear them. If you have a property manager, tell them the closing date so the last statement, the keys and any deposit they hold reach the table. Here’s what never leaves your hands at all:
Read more: Sell My House As Is Fast: Any Condition, No Repairs, Colorado →
- No repair list from a buyer’s lender.
- No cleaning deposit of your own to earn back.
- No fees or commissions, and seller closing costs are covered. The offer is a price, not the exact wire: the title company settles your loan payoff, the security-deposit credit, and the prorated property taxes and rent out of that price, and if your address is outside Colorado it withholds two percent of the price toward your state tax unless you sign an affirmation. Ask for the estimated net before you set your date.
- No showings, no sign in the yard, and no season spent waiting for the right buyer.
How much will I pay in taxes if I sell my rental property?
This is general information, not legal advice; confirm with a Colorado attorney and a CPA before you rely on it. Selling a rental is taxed differently from selling the house you live in, and there are two pieces. The first is capital gain: the sale price, less your selling costs, less your adjusted basis (what you paid, plus capital improvements, minus the depreciation you claimed or could have claimed). How long you have owned matters; property held more than a year is long-term. The second piece is depreciation. The IRS lowers your basis by the depreciation you took or could have taken, and if you sell at a gain the part of that gain tied to depreciation is unrecaptured section 1250 gain, taxed at a rate of up to twenty-five percent and never more than your total gain, while some accelerated or component depreciation can be taxed as ordinary income instead. Colorado also taxes the gain as income on your state return. If you inherited the rental, your basis usually resets to its value on the date of death, which can wipe out most of the old gain and the prior owner’s depreciation, so have your CPA start from that date-of-death value; the inherited house page covers it.
We don’t print rates or brackets here because they change and because yours depends on your whole return. What we can tell you is where the number comes from. A CPA works from a handful of documents: your closing statement from when you bought, your depreciation schedule from your most recent return, and the written offer or listing estimate for the sale, along with your improvement receipts, your prior returns and your other income for the year. Ask for the after-tax net on both paths, not just the gross price. A higher listing price with commissions and carrying costs on one side, and a lower cash offer with none of those on the other, can land closer together after tax than the headline numbers suggest.
On write-offs: the costs of selling reduce your gain, and the improvements you made over the years raise your basis, so gather the receipts for the roof, the furnace, the windows and the remodel, not just the repairs you expensed along the way. With a direct cash sale there are no commissions and your closing costs are covered, so there’s less to deduct, because you didn’t spend it. The IRS publishes its own guidance on residential rental property and on the sale of business and investment property; your CPA works from those and from your records, and we’ll give the title company whatever it needs to make your settlement statement clean.
There are lawful ways to reduce or defer the bill, and every one of them has rules that have to be followed before closing, not after. Which one applies to you is a CPA question, and it’s worth asking before you accept any offer, ours included. These are the routes owners ask us about most:
Read more: Get a Cash Offer for My House: What You Receive in 24 Hours →
- A like-kind exchange (a 1031 exchange) can defer the tax if the proceeds go to a qualified intermediary you set up before closing, the replacement property is identified in writing within forty-five days, and you receive it within one hundred eighty days; we have closed with sellers doing exactly that, and a closing date you choose makes the calendar easier.
- Selling in a year when your other income is lower can change the rate.
- Suspended passive losses from years the rental ran at a paper loss are generally released when you sell your entire interest in the rental to an unrelated buyer in a fully taxable sale; a 1031 exchange or a sale to a relative doesn’t release them.
- Moving back in can shelter part of a later gain if you then own and live in the house at least two of the five years before you sell, but it doesn’t erase the depreciation already taken and the rental years still cut the break, so it means delaying the sale rather than taking this offer now.
Keep renting it or sell it to us for cash.
Keep renting it
- Monthly cash Rent, when it arrives and when the house is occupied, less the mortgage, taxes, insurance and management.
- Your time Calls, turnovers, repairs, late rent, lease renewals and the accounting every spring.
- Repairs Yours, whenever they come due: roof, furnace, water heater, sewer line, flooring between tenants.
- Vacancy Your risk. Every empty month is a full mortgage payment with nothing against it.
- Equity Stays in the walls until you sell or refinance.
- Taxes Rental income each year, with depreciation offsetting some of it, and recapture waiting at the eventual sale.
- The exit Still ahead of you, with the same occupied-or-vacant decision to make later.
Sell it to us for cash
- Monthly cash Rent you actually collect is yours through closing, then the remaining proceeds are wired to you, or to your qualified intermediary if you’re running a 1031 exchange.
- Your time One two-minute call or form, one walkthrough, one signing at a local title company.
- Repairs None. We buy as-is with no cleanout; the turnover is priced into the written offer.
- Vacancy Ends the day we close, occupied or empty.
- Equity Converted to cash on your date, with no fees or commissions and seller closing costs covered.
- Taxes Any taxable gain, including the depreciation-related part, is generally due in the year of sale, unless you plan a deferral with your CPA before closing.
- The exit Done. Written offer within 24 hours; close in as little as 14 days, or later if your plans need it.
What to have on hand.
- The current lease and any renewals, if the property is occupied
- Security deposit amount and where it is held
- Rent roll or payment history, including anything unpaid
- Which utilities are in your name and which are in the tenant’s
- Property manager contact and management agreement, if you use one
- Your most recent mortgage statement, so the title company can request a dated payoff from your servicer
- HOA rules on rentals and any dues owed, if there is an association
- Your depreciation schedule and purchase closing statement, for your CPA, not for us
- The federal lead-based paint disclosure and pamphlet, if the house was built before 1978
Three clear steps, and nothing to surprise you.
Tell us about the rental
Two minutes by form or phone. The address, whether it’s occupied or vacant, the lease end date and rent if there’s a tenant, and how long it has been empty if there isn’t. You talk to Amy or Jenny, not a call center.
Get one written offer with the math shown
Within 24 hours you receive one written, no-obligation cash offer with the math shown and what you net, and we walk you through how we got there. Put it beside a listing estimate net of commissions and carrying costs, and beside another year of landlording. If listing clearly wins, we tell you.
Close on your date and hand over the keys
You pick the closing date, as little as 14 days out or timed to a lease end, a tax year or an exchange deadline. At the title company the deed transfers, any lease comes with it and the deposit is credited to us on the settlement statement, seller closing costs are covered, and there are no fees or commissions. Leave what you don’t want.
Questions homeowners ask us.
Is it ever a good idea to sell rental property?
Yes. A rental earns its keep when the rent covers the mortgage, taxes, insurance and repairs with room to spare, the house is in a condition you can maintain, and you have the time or the manager to run it. When one of those fails, selling is a reasonable decision, not a mistake. Common triggers in Northern Colorado are a roof or furnace a year of rent won’t cover, a long vacancy, ownership from out of state, or equity that would do more elsewhere.
What is the 50% rule in rental property?
It’s an investor’s rule of thumb, not a tax rule or a law. It says that, over time, roughly half of a rental’s gross rent goes to operating costs (taxes, insurance, repairs, vacancy, management, turnover) before the mortgage is paid. Owners use it to sanity-check whether a rental can carry itself. If your rent minus half of itself doesn’t cover the mortgage payment, the house is likely costing you money, which is one reason owners decide to sell rental property rather than keep feeding it.
How to avoid capital gains when selling a rental property?
You generally can’t avoid the tax on a straight sale, but you may be able to defer or reduce it. The best-known route is a like-kind exchange into another investment property, set up with a qualified intermediary before closing and run on strict IRS deadlines. A CPA may also raise timing the sale in a lower-income year, releasing suspended passive losses, or a period of living in the house before selling, each with its own IRS conditions. Confirm your options with a CPA before accepting any offer, ours included.
How much will I pay in taxes if I sell my rental property?
It depends on your gain (sale price less selling costs less adjusted basis), how long you owned the property, how much depreciation you claimed or could have claimed, and your other income for the year. For a rental held more than a year, the IRS taxes the gain at long-term rates, and the part of the gain tied to depreciation is unrecaptured section 1250 gain taxed at up to twenty-five percent and no more than your total gain; Colorado taxes the gain as income on your state return. If your address is outside Colorado, the title company also withholds two percent of the price at closing toward that state tax unless you sign an affirmation. A CPA can estimate it from your purchase closing statement, your depreciation schedule and the offer in hand.
What tax write-offs can I claim when selling a rental property?
The costs of the sale reduce your gain, and the capital improvements you made over the years raise your basis, so gather receipts for the roof, the furnace, the windows and any remodel, not just the repairs you expensed annually. With a direct cash sale there are no commissions and seller closing costs are covered, so there’s less to deduct because you didn’t spend it. Confirm the specifics with a CPA working from the IRS guidance on rental property.
Why do people say you should never sell a rental property?
Because a rental that pays for itself, appreciates and is maintained is a good thing to own, and a taxable sale can mean paying tax on the gain and the depreciation-related gain in one year, though the amount depends on your basis and whether you defer it. That advice assumes the rental is working. It says nothing about a house that needs a roof, sits empty every winter, has a tenant behind on rent, or is managed from another state at a fee. The honest question is whether this one, as it stands, is worth another year of your money and attention.
Should I sell my rental property and invest the money somewhere else?
Ask your financial advisor and your CPA; the number they need from us is the net: what the house puts in your account after a cash sale, with no fees or commissions and your closing costs covered, before tax. Compare that figure, and the tax on it, against what the rental clears in a year after every real cost. If the return on your equity is thin and the house is aging, moving the money is reasonable. If the rental is sound and paying, keeping it may be.
Do you buy vacant rental houses that have sat empty for a while?
Yes, and we’d rather buy them sooner than later. An empty house in Northern Colorado costs its owner a mortgage payment, a tax bill and an insurance premium every month, with the plumbing at risk every winter. We buy vacant houses as they stand, with whatever the last tenant left behind, and close at a local title company on your date. Tell us the address and how long it has been empty, and you’ll have one written offer within 24 hours.
Local buyers, up and down the I-25 corridor.
We buy houses across Larimer, Weld, Boulder, and the Denver-metro counties: Fort Collins to the south metro, within about 15 minutes of I-25.
One closing, and the landlord chapter ends.
Tell us about the rental, occupied or vacant, and within 24 hours you’ll have one written cash offer with the math shown and a plain answer on whether selling now or listing later nets you more.