How It Works: Selling a Fire Damaged House in Louisville

Application One: The Moratorium

Made to Metro's permitting department, which administers the programme jointly with the Jefferson County Property Valuation Administrator.

The scheme fixes your assessment at its value when the application is made, before the rehabilitation is undertaken, and holds it there while the improvements raise the property's actual worth. Section 172B of the Kentucky Constitution caps that at five years.

What Do They Need From You?

Broadly, that the building is at least twenty-five years old, what the plan of improvement is, and what it will cost, so the qualifying threshold for your category can be checked. Schemes of this kind also allow a period in which the improvements must actually be completed, so the plan matters rather than being a formality. Metro's department will tell you exactly what your address requires. The full position is on our page covering the moratorium and the lien.

Application Two: The Permit

Made to the same city government, for the work itself. Nothing unusual about it, and there is no reason it cannot follow the first by a week.

The problem is that it feels like the urgent one. After a fire the pressure is to get the building fixed, and a permit is visibly on the path to that while a tax certificate looks like paperwork for later.

Does Applying for a Permit Forfeit the Moratorium?

The thing that forfeits it is the rehabilitation being undertaken, because that is what changes the assessment the scheme depends on. Whether a permit application alone affects your position is a question for Metro rather than an assumption to make, and it is exactly the sort of question worth asking before rather than after. Ask them in what order they want the two.

The Third Thing, Which Is Not an Application

Staying out of the enforcement track, which requires nothing to be filed and only that the property not be left.

Metro's vacant and abandoned classification needs three things: an open property maintenance violation, a Code Enforcement Officer's determination that the property has been vacant at least one year, and a referral for abatement action. Fines, charges, abatement costs and a fifteen per cent administrative addition then become a lien recorded with the County Clerk.

What We Do With Your Address

The PVA record. First, for the year built, the assessment and the taxing district.

The moratorium category. Which of the routes your address falls in, and whether anything already done affects eligibility.

The County Clerk. Whether anything is recorded against the property.

The building. Whether the framing survived, which decides which market you are in.

What Comes Back

A written figure with each line visible: finished value, cost of the work, carrying cost and margin. The finished value line states whether it assumes the moratorium is available, because on a qualifying property that is a real component of what the repaired house is worth.

What If Repairing Beats Selling?

Then the email says so, and here it says so often. An owner who applies before starting, repairs, and holds five years of frozen assessment on a restored house is in a position no cash offer competes with. Telling you that on day two costs us less than three weeks spent negotiating toward a number that was never going to be accepted.

What Never Happens

No fee at any stage. No request that you clear the site, commission a report or repair anything first. No requirement that your claim be settled. No assignment of the contract to a third party. And we never ask a seller to begin repairs before closing, because on a qualifying property that can extinguish a five-year benefit for whoever ends up owning it.

Common Questions About the Process

How Long Does It Take?

Address to written figure is usually a few days. Closing depends on title and on anything recorded. The insurance claim does not have to be settled first.

Do I Need to Be in Kentucky?

No. Out-of-state owners are common on inherited property and remote closing is routine.

Work Has Already Started.

Then say so at the start. It changes what is available to everyone including us, and it is far better disclosed early than discovered late.

How This Works, Step by Step