People usually call me somewhere in the middle of a bad month. So the first thing I want to do is take the mystery out of the process, because not knowing what happens next is most of what makes this stressful.
Here’s the whole thing in order.
Step one: a phone call, about ten minutes
I ask where the house is, what shape it’s in, and what you’re actually trying to do. That third one is the one that matters and it’s the one nobody expects.
Somebody who has to be out by the 30th has a completely different problem than somebody whose real issue is that their sister won’t sign anything. I’ve had people turn down a higher number because a slower closing would have wrecked their move. If I don’t know what you’re working around, I can’t tell you if we’re even a fit.
The question that saves everybody time
I’ll ask if the house is inside the Orange Park town limits. It sounds like a strange thing to lead with. It isn’t.
Inside the town, your permits, code enforcement, water, and sewer go through the Town of Orange Park. In Bellair, Lakeside, Oakleaf, and most of the rest of the area with an Orange Park mailing address, all of that is Clay County. Same envelope in your mailbox, different rulebook. If you’re not sure which one you’re in, the town’s limits map answers it in about a minute, and knowing it early keeps a title company from finding it out for you three weeks in.
Step two: I come look at it
One visit, the whole house
Not a drive-by. I want to see the parts you’d rather I didn’t, because finding those later is how buyers end up renegotiating, and I’d rather price it right the first time than come back for a second bite.
Don’t clean. Don’t haul anything off. Don’t get a quote for the roof. People apologize to me on the phone before I’ve even pulled up, and they’re almost always describing something worse than what I find. In six years and more than a hundred houses, nobody has shown me a room that made me reconsider.
What I’m actually looking at
Roof, panel, plumbing, water. Water hardest of all, because water hides. Not the leak you know about. The stain in the closet nobody opens, the soft spot at the base of the shower wall, the low corner of the yard that’s still wet on Tuesday when it last rained Saturday.
I’m also checking whether the room count matches the county record, because a garage that became a bedroom in 1985 without a permit is common around here and it changes things. Not for me. For anybody trying to get a loan on it later. Same with an open permit from a re-roof nobody finalized. Those are the details that decide a timeline, and there’s more on how we handle them in houses that need major repairs. If you want to see what the county has on file for your place before I get there, the Clay County Property Appraiser will show you the recorded square footage and room count, which is the same thing any appraiser will be comparing against later.
Step three: the number, and where it comes from
Recent closed sales on houses like yours, not asking prices. Minus what this one needs. Minus what it costs us to hold and resell it. Minus a margin, because this is how I feed my family and hiding that would be worse than saying it.
I go through all of it standing in your kitchen. You might hear it and decide it’s not for you, which happens plenty. But you should always know how somebody arrived at their number, and a buyer who won’t walk you through it has told you something already.
While you’re checking on us, check on us properly. Look the company up on the Florida Division of Corporations and then search the county records for our name to see what we’ve actually bought around here. A company that really buys houses leaves a trail of purchases. One that assigns contracts to other people leaves almost none, and that gap is where sellers get hurt.
How it compares to putting it on the market
Selling through an agent usually shows a bigger number on the sign. That’s true and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t. The part worth being careful about is that the number on the sign and the number you keep are two different things.
Commission comes off both sides. Whatever the inspection turns up comes off after that. Then there’s a couple of months of payments while it sits, and the real chance a buyer’s loan falls apart at week five and you start over with a listing that now looks stale. In April 2026 the average house in Clay County sold for about 94.8% of what it was asking, and that’s before any of the rest of it came out.
Both are real options. I just want you comparing what lands in your account, not what goes on the sign. If you want to see the current local figures for yourself, they’re in the Orange Park market report.
Step four: title, which is what actually sets the date
We’ve closed in as little as seven days. When that happens it’s because the title came back clean, not because anybody hustled harder.
A house owned by the same couple since 1988 with no liens moves fast. A house where one heir never signed anything, or there’s an old judgment against a previous owner, or a contractor filed a lien in 2014 that never got released, takes as long as it takes. Payoff letters are the other one. Your lender’s payoff department moves at its own speed and nobody can push it.
So if a buyer hands you a guaranteed closing date before the title search is back, they’re guessing. Ask them what happens if title comes back with something on it.
Step five: closing
You pick the date, within reason. There’s no commission because there’s no agent, no lender fees because there’s no loan, and we cover the normal closing costs on our purchases. You sign, and the money is wired or handed to you.
You can leave whatever you don’t want. Furniture, the garage, the stuff in the attic since the nineties. That’s already in our budget and we’re better set up for it than you are on a Saturday with a rented trailer.
Why I do it this way
I was a licensed realtor for 11 years, mostly working with for-sale-by-owner sellers and investors. I was fine at it. But the same call kept coming in and I couldn’t help those people with a listing agreement. Somebody with a foreclosure sale five weeks out. Somebody who inherited a house eight hundred miles away. Somebody whose tenant stopped paying and started taking the appliances.
Buying directly wasn’t me leaving real estate. It was me moving into the part of it where I could actually do something on a short timeline. That’s what We Buy Houses Orange Park is, and it’s why the explanation matters to me as much as the number does.
If you want to see what other people’s experience was before you call anybody, the reviews page is probably more useful than anything I can tell you about myself. And when you’re ready, We Buy Houses Orange Park will look at the house and give you a number with the reasoning attached.
Josiah Murdaugh grew up in Orange Park and spent 11 years as a licensed real estate agent before he started buying houses directly. He has bought more than a hundred since. About We Buy Houses Orange Park.