Brown County · Buying in Wisconsin since 2010
Sell my house fast in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Most Green Bay calls we take are about an older house on the east or west side, very often a duplex, that has turned into more work than it is worth to keep. We drive up from Appleton, look it over alongside you, and hand you a written cash figure by the next day.
- Written cash offer in 24 hours
- Close in as little as 7 days
- No fees, commissions or repairs
Rather talk to a person right now? (920) 259-4326
The market here
What Green Bay housing is actually like
The housing stock
Green Bay's older core is dense and almost entirely pre-war. Astor and Whitney Park carry substantial older homes, while Fort Howard on the west side and Navarino near downtown are packed with modest workers' housing and the two-family duplexes that went up around the shipyards and packing plants. A very large share of that duplex stock has been rental for thirty or forty years, and it shows in the mechanicals long before it shows in the photos. Preble and the far east side are newer and generally sell on condition rather than distress.
Why Green Bay sellers call us
Green Bay is our second home market and we are up there most weeks. Inherited duplexes and burnt-out long-term rentals are far and away the two most common calls we take from the city.
Neighborhoods and areas we buy in
- Astor
- Whitney Park
- Olde North
- Navarino
- Fort Howard
- Preble
- Joannes Park
- Downtown
West side, east side: a city that used to be two
Fort Howard, on the west bank of the Fox, was its own city until Green Bay annexed it in 1895. That history is still visible in the housing. Both banks grew up around their own small downtowns, and the blocks closest to the river on either side carry some of the oldest houses in the region. When people tell us their place is "not that old," it frequently turns out to have been built before anyone in the family can remember.
Age on its own is not a defect. What we look at on a walk-through is how the house has been kept up in pieces over the decades:
- Wiring that was updated one room at a time, so a newer panel feeds a mix of modern circuits and much older runs in the walls and attic.
- Heating that has been patched rather than replaced, particularly boilers and older forced-air furnaces moved to a new fuel at some point.
- Basements that take on water in a wet spring, with stone or block walls that have been parged, painted and painted again.
- Additions and attic rooms finished by a previous owner, sometimes without a permit anyone can find.
Any one of those can stall a financed buyer, because it lands on the inspector's report and then on the appraiser's desk. Several together usually mean the house will sell to an investor or a cash buyer whatever the listing says. We price them openly: the offer you get from us lists what we think each item costs to put right, which lets you trace every dollar of the figure and challenge any line you think is wrong.
The newer parts of the city, out towards Preble and the far east side, rarely look like this. If that is where you are and the house is in good order, read the last section on this page before you decide anything.
Selling a duplex with someone living upstairs
The two-family house is the property we are asked about most in Green Bay. Sometimes the owner lives downstairs and has rented the upper unit for twenty years. Sometimes both units are let and the owner has moved away. Sometimes a parent owned it and the family has inherited a building with a tenant they have never met.
A sitting tenant does not stop a sale. Each lease simply transfers to us on closing day; no tenant has to be asked to go so the sale can happen. What makes the closing smooth is having a few facts straight before the title company asks for them:
- A copy of each lease, or a note of the terms if the arrangement has only ever been verbal.
- The security deposit held for each unit and where it is being kept.
- Which utilities are on separate meters and which the owner has been paying.
- Whether anyone is behind on rent, and by how much.
The deposits and the month's rent are settled between us on the closing statement, so the tenant's money follows the building. If you live in one half yourself, you choose your own moving date and the tenant's tenancy is simply ours from that day. For the deposit and rent-proration rules in detail, see the landlord's guide to selling with tenants.
One local rule shapes a lot of these decisions. The city's own permit guidance says that permitted work on a rental property has to be pulled and done by a licensed contractor, so an owner-landlord cannot do the bigger repairs on the upper flat with a weekend and a borrowed truck. For a landlord who has been holding things together personally, that is often the moment the arithmetic tips. If that is where you are, our page for landlords ready to stop walks through the choice.
Water service lines and the questions buyers now ask
Green Bay did something many Wisconsin cities are still working on. According to the Wisconsin DNR, the city's water utility removed the last private-side lead service line in October 2020, with help from a state loan program. That is real progress, and it is worth telling a buyer about.
It does not settle every question. Green Bay Water still publishes a service line inventory map, and its categories include galvanized lines that require replacement as well as lead. Buyers' inspectors and lenders have started asking about service line material, and a house whose record shows an older galvanized line can draw a request to replace it before closing. You can look up your own address on the utility's map, and it is worth doing before you pick a route to sell.
What that means for your sale
If you list, find out first and be ready to answer. A buyer who learns about it from their inspector two weeks into the contract is in a stronger position to reopen the price than one who was told at the start.
If you sell to us, it is one more line in the arithmetic. We do not ask you to replace anything, and we do not come back after the walk-through with a new number because something underground turned out to be older than expected. The same goes for the other old-house items that sit behind walls, from cast-iron drains to the lead-based paint disclosure that applies to homes built before 1978.
The general case for selling without making repairs first is laid out on our as-is page, and the guide for houses that need too much work helps you decide whether a particular fix is worth doing before a sale or not.
When the city has already written to you
A letter from the city's inspection staff is one of the more stressful things to find in a Green Bay mailbox, especially at a property you do not live in. It usually lists items to correct and a date to correct them by, and it tends to arrive at the worst possible time: after a tenant has left, after a death in the family, or after the owner has already decided they are done with the place.
Here is what we need to see if you are in that position:
- The order itself, or a photo of every page. We price the listed work alongside everything else we see.
- The compliance date, so we can tell you honestly whether a closing can land before it.
- Anything already done towards the list, with receipts if you have them.
Once we close, the order is ours to deal with, along with the permits and the contractors. You are not asked to finish anything first, and an open order does not change the closing date you choose.
The reason this matters is that a buyer using a mortgage often cannot get past one. The lender's appraiser notes the condition, the underwriter wants the violations cleared, and a sale that looked done goes back to square one. Because no bank is lending on our purchase, so that particular trap is not in the path. Our code violations page explains the general picture across Wisconsin.
If you are also behind on the property taxes, which often travels with a building that has become a burden, whatever is owed comes off the sale price on the closing statement instead of being something you must find cash for ahead of time. The page on delinquent taxes covers how long Wisconsin counties allow before that becomes a separate problem.
What a Green Bay sale with us looks like, start to finish
Green Bay is the market we spend the most time in after the Fox Valley, and the sequence does not change from house to house. Step one is a call to us, or the short form on this page. Dan or Diana then visits, usually within a few days, and by the following day there is a written offer in your hands that shows our estimate of the finished value, what we expect the work to cost, and what is left for you. You can take a week to think about it, or show it to anyone you trust.
If you accept, a Wisconsin title company handles the search, the payoffs and the deed. The closing date is your choice, anywhere from roughly a week to several months away, and the On-Time Guarantee commits $5,000, parked with the title company, to our hitting it. You leave behind whatever you do not want, including the contents of a basement nobody has looked into for years. There are no fees, commission or repair credits taken off the number.
The fixed costs of selling here, mainly the state transfer fee and your share of the year's property tax, apply whoever buys. Rather than repeat them, our Green Bay seller's guide lays them out, along with the condition report and the Brown County offices involved.
When we are not the right answer
Suppose the house is in decent order, you still live there, and no deadline is pressing: listing with a good local agent will very likely net you more than we would. Hearing that from us on the first call beats finding it out after you have sold too cheaply. The comparison is set out plainly on our cash offer vs. listing page.
We buy across the rest of the county too, including De Pere, Allouez, Ashwaubenon and Bellevue; everything else is listed on our Brown County page.
What we take on
The Green Bay property types we buy
Pre-war bungalows and Cape Cods on the east and west sides
Two-family duplexes around the old shipyards and packing plants
Property with open city orders
Long-term rentals with failing mechanicals
Owner-occupied duplexes with a tenant in the other half
Free, no obligation
What is your Green Bay house worth to us?
Give us the street and a rough description (single-family, upper-and-lower duplex, a rental with people living in it) and Dan or Diana will find a time to see it in person, usually the same week.
Rather talk to someone? Call or text (920) 259-4326 — a real person answers.
Green Bay sellers ask us
Green Bay inspectors have issued an order on my house. Can I still sell it?
I live in half of a duplex and rent out the other half. Can you still buy it?
Commission aside, which costs come with selling a Green Bay house?
Our water service line may be old galvanized pipe. Do we need to replace it before selling?
Do you actually come to Green Bay, or does someone else see the house?
Free guides for Green Bay sellers
Local resources
Local resources for selling in Green Bay
In Green Bay the City Assessor at City Hall, 100 N. Jefferson Street, sets the assessed value on your bill and the City Clerk takes in-person tax payments in Room 106 of the same building; the deed itself is recorded by Brown County, not the city.
- Wisconsin DNR — floodplain management
- Wisconsin Circuit Court Access
- FEMA Flood Map Service Center
- Green Bay Housing and Zoning Inspection
- Green Bay's own clerk and assessor
Next steps
We also buy nearby
Get a cash offer on your Green Bay house
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