Sell Your Woodrow House or Manufactured Home As-Is

Woodrow is not a town, and that changes the sale

Woodrow sits ten miles south of Lubbock, near the bottom of the county, just off U.S. 87 — TxDOT curved the highway around the east side of town in 1970. Main street is the old highway itself, left behind as Loop 493, the Woodrow Loop. There is no city limit sign because there is no city: no city hall, no city water or sewer, no code enforcement, no inspector. Lubbock-Cooper South Elementary is on the Loop. So is Peaceful Gardens: over 23 acres, nearly 13,000 interments, flat markers. Stubb is buried out there.

When the place was named the argument was Woodrow or Wilson. Woodrow won. There is a Wilson, Texas too, one county south.

What a Woodrow property actually is

The Census publishes no population for Woodrow; it is not a place on their map. The tract around the crossroads, ZIP 79423, holds about 1,600 housing units, and 28% of them are manufactured homes; inside the city of Lubbock it is under 2%. There is not one apartment, duplex or townhouse in it.

Three in ten homes here predate 1980. Almost nothing is listed for sale, while about 96 units sit in the Census “other vacant” bucket: not for sale, not for rent, not a vacation house. The median owner here pays roughly $2,401 a year in property tax against $3,333 inside the city, because there is no city tax out here.

If it is a manufactured home, a deed is not the whole sale

There are 448 manufactured homes in this tract, and this is what most often stalls a closing here. Texas keeps a separate ownership record for them. Tex. Occ. Code Sec. 1201.206(e): “Ownership of a manufactured home does not pass or vest at a sale or transfer of the home until a completed application for the issuance of a statement of ownership is filed with the department.”

We will not promise to fix your title. It is paperwork, not a dead end, but a retail lender will not wait. If there are liens on the home, raise that early.

No permit history, because no permit existed

Lubbock County publishes it plainly: it has no zoning regulations per se, and it does not require or issue building permits. It does have subdivision regulations and other permitting requirements, and those still apply. Nobody out here ever issued a building permit for a house.

The enclosed carport, the added bedroom and the shop with a bathroom have no permit on file, and never could have. That is not your fault. It is what an appraiser flags and a lender balks at, and it is how a Woodrow retail sale dies. We do not need it: selling a house with unpermitted work.

Septic, wells, and what is under the yard

Septic is county business out here, and the county keeps the files for permitted, inspected and approved systems at the Lubbock County Courthouse, Suite 1220.

Then you dig. The soil here is Acuff loam, well drained — not the high-plasticity clay that cracks slabs in Dallas — but a cemented caliche layer a few feet down is why trenching quotes come back high.

When a cash offer is not your best move

• The house is newer, financeable, and you are not in a hurry. About 31% of homes here went up in 2010 or later, and a clean place on acreage in Lubbock-Cooper ISD pulls Lubbock buyers. List it; it beats us after commission.
• The septic is the only real problem and you have time. A $360 county permit and a new drain field may cost less than the discount you would take selling it broken.
• It is a manufactured home on land you own, with clean paperwork. If the real property election was perfected and the appraisal district notified, it is an ordinary house sale.
• Somebody offered more, in writing, with proof of funds. Take it. We will not talk you out of a better number.

Compare: your options for selling fast around Lubbock.

How selling to us works in Woodrow

1. Tell us about the place. Call 806-630-0875 or use the form. Do not clean it out or fix anything. If it is a manufactured home, say what paperwork you have, or that you have none.
2. We drive out and look. Ten miles south on U.S. 87, then onto the Woodrow Loop. We would rather see the drain field, the well and the corner of the slab than guess from photos. Slab, pier-and-beam or manufactured home on a permanent foundation, we buy it as it sits.
3. You get a number. Not a range — a number, and how we got there. No obligation.
4. You pick the date. You pick the closing date. When speed matters we can close in as little as 7 days on the right deal, and if the paperwork has to catch up first, we work to that. We cover all closing costs on purchase.

We buy most houses to keep or fix. On some we assign the contract, and your paperwork says so before you sign.

The Woodrow situations we buy in

• An inherited place on a county road — a well, a septic tank, a shop, three siblings in three cities.
• A house in probate, handled in Lubbock.
• A house that has sat empty — about 96 units here are exactly that.
• A rental you manage from out of town, with no city code office to lean on.
• Property taxes behind, or hail damage — everybody here has re-roofed.
• A move you already have a date on. We also buy in New Home, Slaton and Wolfforth.

Questions we get from Woodrow

If you own a place around Woodrow you no longer want to keep up — the parents’ house nobody has lived in since the funeral, the manufactured home whose paperwork nobody can find — tell us about it and we will give you a number. You pick the closing date. Call 806-630-0875 or use the form above.