The Homes Nobody Else Could Sell

By Nancy Adinolfe

Nancy Adinolfe is a top-producing RE/MAX real estate agent who has served California clients since 2018. A member of the RE/MAX Master Club, she provides expert guidance to buyers, sellers, and families throughout Sacramento, Elk Grove, Folsom, Rancho Cordova, and surrounding communities.

Most agents take one look at a house that needs real work, dated finishes, a hidden leak, decades of belongings still inside, and advise you to drop the price and take what you can get. I do the opposite. Fixing up the homes other people give up on is honestly my favorite part of this job, and it has put tens of thousands of extra dollars in my sellers’ pockets. Here is how it works.

When you inherit a house, or need to sell one that has seen better days, it feels like you have only two choices: sell it as-is for a low price, or spend money you may not have to fix it up first. There is a third path, and it is the one I have built my business around. I specialize in probate and estate sales, which means I am very often helping families sell a home that has been lived in for decades, sat empty, or needs serious repairs no one wants to face during an already difficult time.

Over the years, that has become a kind of superpower, and a few real homes show exactly how.

You often don’t have to pay for the repairs out of pocket. I work with a renovate now, pay later approach: we complete the work first, and the cost is paid out of escrow when the home closes, so the seller fronts nothing. On one estate, the family wanted new flooring, new countertops, new appliances, and fresh paint inside and out, and there was enough equity in the home to cover all of it without anyone writing a check. We did the renovations, and the home sold for full market value. That is the entire idea: you capture the higher sale price of a move-in-ready home without needing cash to get it there.

I find the problems other people miss, and I can run the whole project even when you can’t be there. One home had sat unsold for months. I knew the neighborhood well, so I walked it with an excellent handyman, and we found stains beneath the primary bathroom vanity and a small slit in the balcony floor. That slit told the real story. Water had been seeping through the wall, and when we opened it, the framing was black with dry rot.

We rebuilt the wall from the studs out, interior drywall and exterior stucco alike, replaced the entire balcony floor, cleared the pest and county inspections, then deep cleaned and staged the home, and it sold within days. And if you live far away, this matters: on another estate, my seller was in Texas the whole time, so I filmed every step. We selected materials over video and I recorded the progress, and he never had to fly out once. Distance is not an obstacle. I become your eyes on the ground.

This is where careful work becomes real money for the family. On one estate, an heir had been living in the home in very rough conditions, and it needed a complete cleanout before we could even consider selling. We cleared it, used a free county bulky-waste pickup, and cleaned up the yard, then I gathered three separate contractor quotes, which I always do. I do not simply take the first number. I get three, line them up so they are genuinely comparable, usually within a day or two, and review them with the seller so they can decide with real information.

My market analysis showed that home would never have sold for more than roughly three hundred seventy-five thousand dollars as it stood. After about $45,000 of work, it sold for well over $500,000. That is a life-changing difference, and it came from doing the work the right way. It is also why so many of my sellers leave five-star reviews, and why my listings tend to sell above asking and faster than the market average. If you want to see how I guide sellers through the whole process, you can start on my home selling page.

So if you have inherited a home that needs work, or you are looking at a house you assume you will have to sell cheap, please do not make that decision before we talk. Very often there is a way to complete the repairs with nothing out of your pocket, sell for far more than you thought possible, and have someone handle the entire messy middle for you, even from another state.

This is genuinely the work I love most. If you are anywhere in the Greater Sacramento area, call or text me at (530) 313-3158, or email me at nancy@listingexpert.net.

Let’s talk about what your home could actually sell for. You might be surprised.