A cash offer on your Lakeland house, within 24 hours of the address. No repairs, no agent, no closing costs on your side. If the property has a sinkhole disclosure, sits in a flood zone, or has a condition that ended the last conventional deal — those are exactly the situations we buy.
We buy houses across Polk County: Lakeland proper, Auburndale, Bartow, Winter Haven, Haines City, and the smaller communities in between. We buy directly — more than 100 houses to date — and where we are not the right buyer, we work with a network to bring you one who is.
Short version
Cash offer in 24 hours. Close in 7–14 days on your schedule. No fees, no commission, no repairs.
We are the right call when a deadline, a condition issue, or a financing problem makes a retail listing impractical.
Submit the address using the form, or call (615) 780-7349.
What we buy in Lakeland
Most buyers in this market want move-in-ready houses in South Lakeland or near Lake Hollingsworth. We are not those buyers.
Properties we buy regularly:
- Homes with confirmed sinkhole activity — even after a prior insurance claim or remediation, when conventional lenders have declined to write a mortgage on the parcel
- Lakefront and lake-adjacent homes in FEMA flood zones near Bonny Lake, Lake Wire, or along the residential streets off Memorial Boulevard
- Older homes in Dixieland and North Lakeland with deferred maintenance: aged roofing, original 1960s wiring, galvanized plumbing
- Inherited properties — often a parent’s home in a 55+ community like Imperial Lakes or Lake Miriam Shores that the estate cannot hold and won’t maintain
- Properties where Florida’s insurance market has made carrying the house financially unsustainable
- Homes with unpermitted additions, HOA violations, or open code issues that stopped a prior sale
How it works
Here is what happens after the address goes in:
- We check Polk County property records, sales comps, and — for most Lakeland addresses — the state’s sinkhole claims history for that parcel
- Within 24 hours, we call or text with a number. No obligation to take it
- If we need to walk the property, we do that together — it’s a conversation, not a contingency used to lower the offer later
- We handle title through a local title company. You do not need to hire your own closing attorney
- You pick the closing date — as fast as seven days, or longer if your situation calls for it
Florida foreclosure is slower than Tennessee — but the deadline is still firm
Florida is a judicial foreclosure state. Unlike Tennessee, where a trustee’s sale can happen in 30 to 60 days with no court involvement, every Florida foreclosure goes through circuit court. In Polk County, that means the Tenth Judicial Circuit Court in Bartow.
The timeline: the lender files a lis pendens, you get served, and you have 20 days to file a response. If no response is filed, the court enters a default judgment and schedules a clerk’s auction. From lis pendens to auction, the process typically runs 6 to 12 months in Florida — sometimes longer depending on the court’s docket and the complexity of the file.
That extra time is real and worth using. But the auction date is a hard stop. Once the clerk’s sale is complete — Polk County runs these through the Clerk of Courts’ online platform — title transfers to the highest bidder and your right to sell is gone. Selling before the auction is the only way to capture your equity and avoid a completed foreclosure on your public record.
If you have received a lis pendens and want to know where you stand, call us at (615) 780-7349 and tell us the stage. We can usually tell you within one conversation whether there is still time to act.
The sinkhole problem — and why it kills conventional sales
Polk County sits in the middle of Florida’s documented sinkhole corridor. The Florida Department of Financial Services tracks sinkhole insurance claims by county, and Polk has ranked among the top counties in the state for sinkhole activity for years. That is geology, not rumor — the limestone substrate under this part of Florida is more porous and more susceptible to dissolution than most of the rest of the state.
The financing problem is specific: once sinkhole activity is confirmed and documented on a parcel — through a prior insurance claim, a report from a licensed geotechnical engineer, or county records — most conventional lenders will not write a mortgage on that property. FHA and VA guidelines exclude homes with prior sinkhole activity unless remediation meets particular standards, and many private lenders carry their own exclusions on top of those. The result: a buyer who wants your house may not be able to get traditional financing to purchase it, regardless of what the repair looks like today.
We buy sinkhole-disclosed properties, remediated and not. For how the offer process works on those cases, see our full page on selling a house with sinkhole damage.
When a cash offer is not the right answer
Straight answer: if your Lakeland house is in decent condition, you have no hard deadline, and South Lakeland or the Cleveland Heights neighborhood has buyers competing for homes in your price range — an agent will probably net you more than we will.
A market-rate listing on a well-maintained house in an active neighborhood can return $20,000 to $40,000 more than a cash offer, after commission. That spread is real and worth weighing honestly before you decide.
What the listing trade-off looks like in practice: 30 to 45 days of showings, an inspection contingency the buyer uses to request repairs, a 45 to 60-day financing contingency, 5 to 6% agent commission at closing, and the real possibility the deal falls through when the buyer’s lender doesn’t approve the file. If those don’t create problems for your situation, list with an agent.
We are the right call when one or more of these is true: there is a hard deadline (foreclosure auction, divorce settlement, probate court order), the property has a condition that makes conventional financing impossible, or the cost and timeline of preparing the house for retail sale is not realistic right now.
Straight answers
Does sinkhole history affect the offer?
Yes, it factors into the number. A confirmed sinkhole limits the pool of buyers who can take the property, and our offer reflects that. We are transparent about how we arrive at the number. The sinkhole does not disqualify the property from a sale.
Can I sell if the house is in a FEMA flood zone?
Yes. We buy properties in Special Flood Hazard Areas, including Zone AE and Zone A designations common near Lakeland’s lake chains. Conventional buyers in those zones must carry flood insurance, which raises monthly costs and can derail deals at inspection. We have no such requirement. See our page on selling a house in a flood zone for more detail.
Do I need to be in Lakeland for the closing?
No. Florida closings can be done remotely — you sign the documents wherever you are, and the title company handles disbursement. This is common for inherited properties and sellers who have already relocated.
What if there is already a listing agreement in place?
We cannot buy directly while an exclusive listing agreement is active. Check the expiration date on your contract. If the listing has gone stale, ask your agent to release you in writing. Once it expires, call us.
Get an offer on your Lakeland property
Submit the address using the form on this page. You will have a cash offer within 24 hours with no obligation to accept it.
We also buy houses elsewhere in Florida — see our Florida home buyer page and specific pages for Tampa and St. Petersburg if the property is elsewhere on the I-4 corridor or along the bay.