Why We Raise the Credits First
Missouri's rehabilitation credit is worth 25 percent of qualified expenditures on a certified historic structure here, and it is available on owner-occupied houses as well as income-producing property. With the federal credit on income-producing buildings the combined figure reaches 45 percent.
That credit is worth the same to you as it is to a buyer. So a buyer who acquires an eligible building, rehabilitates it and claims the credit has captured value that was available to you. There is nothing improper about it, and there is also no reason for an owner not to know.
Does Telling Me This Cost You Deals?
What We Buy
Fire-damaged property across the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County, in any condition from smoke to a partly collapsed shell. Structural masonry and frame. Certified historic structures and ordinary post-war housing. Claims open, settled, denied and uninsured. Owner-occupied, tenanted, vacant and inherited.
Where we decline it is geography, and the boundaries here are unusual. The city and the county are separate governments, and the county divides among many municipalities. Beyond the metro we are the wrong buyer and will say so rather than take the enquiry.
How the Number Is Built
Finished value of the building on that site, less the cost of getting there, less carrying cost, less margin.
What makes St. Louis offers differ is almost entirely the shell. A buyer who has had someone look at the masonry prices what is standing. A buyer who has not either treats it as a teardown, which is usually wrong, or assumes it is fine, which is sometimes wrong. Both numbers move once a mason walks the building.
Why Do Offers on Brick Buildings Vary So Widely?
Where Our Interests Diverge From Yours
We are the buyer. Not an adviser, not neutral. We benefit if you accept less and decide quickly.
On the second point our interests happen to align with yours here, and it is worth saying why rather than leaving it as a claim. An open masonry building can be stripped of its walls, and a fire-damaged structure can move toward emergency condemnation. Deciding within weeks rather than months genuinely serves you, and it would be true if we did not exist.
Everything else is checkable: the State Historic Preservation Office for eligibility, the Department of Economic Development for the credit programme, the assessor and the relevant recorder for the property and for what we have actually bought.
We are also not brokers, not public adjusters, not contractors, not contract assigners, not lawyers and not accountants. The last one matters here, because the credits are transferable and what that is worth is an accountant's calculation rather than ours.
When Somebody Else Is Right
Nobody — rehabilitate it. On an eligible building with a sound shell and a fundable scope, this is the commonest right answer in this city.
A rehabber who works with credits. Where you cannot fund the work, a specialist who can will pay more for an eligible building than a general buyer, because the credits are worth more inside their model.
A masonry builder. Where the shell is sound but the building is not eligible, someone who prices walls properly beats a buyer who discounts them.
Why Point Me Away From a Sale?
Reaching Us
Send an address through any form on this site. Before you deal with us, secure the building if it is brick and open, and check the historic position with the preservation office. Then read the two questions on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart, and the detail on our page covering historic credits, brick and condemnation.