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If you own a home in McAllen or anywhere in Hidalgo County that's become a burden — a foreclosure, a probate or inherited estate, delinquent taxes, liens, code issues, or repairs you can't take on — you have more than one way out. We'll walk you through all of them in plain language.
Texas moves faster than almost anywhere else. A lender holding a deed of trust can foreclose without ever filing a lawsuit, and the minimum timeline from notice of default to a courthouse sale is only about six weeks. At the same time, Texas gives homeowners one of the longest tax-sale redemption windows in the country. Those two facts pull in opposite directions, and which deadline you're facing changes the answer completely — which is why we start with a conversation, not an offer.
Texas permits the assignment of a purchase contract without a real estate license, provided it isn't used to engage in real estate brokerage and the nature of the equitable interest is disclosed in writing to any seller or potential buyer — that's Tex. Occ. Code § 1101.0045. We follow that rule. Where River Capital LLC acquires and assigns a contract in Texas, we tell you in writing, up front, that what we're offering is our equitable interest in the contract and not the real property itself. We are not a licensed Texas real estate broker or sales agent, and we do not represent you in a transaction.
Tell us about the property. A no-obligation direct cash offer is one of the options we'll cover.
Before you sell, check what help you’re entitled to — these are the official offices and programs for Hidalgo County.
Texas is a non-judicial foreclosure state, and that single fact shapes everything. Nearly all Texas home loans are secured by a deed of trust, which contains a power of sale — meaning the lender does not have to file a lawsuit, appear before a judge, or obtain a judgment before selling your home. There is no court docket to slow things down.
The sequence is short. For a residence, the mortgage servicer generally must first send a notice of default by certified mail giving you at least 20 days to cure the default. (That cure notice is a homeowner protection — it does not apply to commercial property, where whatever your loan documents say controls.) If the default isn't cured, the lender then posts, files with the county clerk, and serves a notice of sale at least 21 days before the sale date. Add those together and the statutory minimum from the first notice to a courthouse sale is roughly 41 days. Federal servicing rules generally still require your servicer to wait until you're more than 120 days behind before starting, so in practice you usually have a few months of warning — but once the notices begin, the clock is very short by national standards.
Texas foreclosure sales run on a fixed calendar. Under Tex. Prop. Code § 51.002, the sale must be a public auction held on the first Tuesday of the month, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., at the place designated for such sales in the county where the land sits. If the first Tuesday falls on January 1 or July 4, the sale moves to the first Wednesday. The notice has to state the earliest time the sale will begin, and the sale must start within three hours after that stated time. Those requirements matter: Texas courts have set aside foreclosure sales where the required notice wasn't properly given.
The part homeowners most often don't know: Texas generally provides no post-sale redemption period after a mortgage foreclosure. Unlike South Dakota, where most homeowners get a year, once the sale happens in Texas it is ordinarily final. Everything therefore depends on acting before the sale date — reinstating the loan, negotiating a workout or short sale, or selling the property outright. (This is general information about the Texas process, not legal advice. Your deadlines depend on your loan documents and your case, so confirm them with a Hidalgo County attorney or a HUD-approved housing counselor.) If you'd like help mapping options on a specific property, we're glad to walk through it at no cost.
Two things can still happen after the gavel falls, and both have deadlines worth knowing.
A deficiency suit has a two-year limit — and you can fight the number. If the property sells for less than you owed, the lender can sue you for the shortfall, but under Tex. Prop. Code § 51.003 that suit must be filed within two years of the foreclosure sale. More usefully, the statute gives you a right most borrowers never exercise: you can ask the court to determine the property's fair market value as of the sale date. If that value is higher than what the property actually fetched at auction, the difference becomes an offset against the deficiency — reduced by any lien the foreclosure didn't wipe out. Foreclosure auctions routinely produce prices below market, so this can be a large number. But it only happens if someone asks: if no party requests the valuation and puts competent evidence in front of the fact-finder, the court simply uses the auction price. Note also that this right can be waived in a guaranty agreement, and the Texas Supreme Court has enforced such waivers.
You don't have to leave the day of the sale. Title changing hands doesn't put you out on the street — the new owner still has to go through an eviction. Under Tex. Prop. Code § 24.005, the baseline is three days' written notice to vacate before a forcible detainer suit can be filed. And if the property was occupied by a current, non-defaulting residential tenant under a lease junior to the foreclosed lien, a purchaser who chooses not to honor the lease generally must give that tenant at least 30 days' written notice to vacate. (Section § 24.005 was amended by the 89th Legislature, so confirm the current text and which subsection applies to your situation with a Texas attorney.)
Property taxes run on a completely separate track from your mortgage, and the cost of falling behind escalates on a schedule rather than gradually. Under Tex. Tax Code § 33.01, a tax that goes delinquent on February 1 picks up a 6% penalty in the first month, plus 1% for each additional month, and separately 1% interest per month for as long as it's unpaid. If the tax is still delinquent on July 1, the penalty jumps to a flat 12% regardless of how many months have passed. On top of that, § 33.07 lets a taxing unit add a further collection penalty once the account goes to its delinquent-tax attorney — capped at the compensation in that attorney contract — and the collector must send notice of that penalty between 30 and 60 days before July 1. In other words, the single most expensive date on the Texas property tax calendar is July 1, and there is a written warning in the mail before you get there.
If the account stays unpaid, the taxing units can sue and the property can be sold at a tax sale. In Hidalgo County these are conducted by the sheriff or a constable, held on the first Tuesday of the month between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the place designated by the commissioners court. Worth knowing if you're watching your own property: recent Hidalgo County sales and resales have been run as online auctions rather than on the courthouse steps, and registered bidders have to renew their registration with the county tax assessor-collector every 90 days. Confirm the format and venue for any specific sale with the Hidalgo County Tax Office, since this has changed more than once.
But a tax sale purchase is not necessarily the end of your rights. Under Tex. Tax Code § 34.21, if the property was your residence homestead, was appraised as agricultural land, or was a mineral interest, you generally have two years from the date the purchaser's deed is recorded to redeem it. The cost is the amount the purchaser paid plus permitted costs and taxes, plus a premium of 25% if you redeem within the first year, or 50% in the second year. For property that is not homestead, agricultural, or mineral — a rental or commercial building, for example — the redemption window is generally only 180 days, with a 25% premium.
Two cautions. The redemption clock runs from the recording of the purchaser's deed, not the auction date, so the exact start matters and is worth confirming in the real property records. And redemption does not give you possession or the rents during that period — the purchaser generally holds those while the window is open. (General information, not legal advice — confirm specifics with the Hidalgo County Tax Office, the district clerk, or a Texas attorney.)
Before anyone sells a house over back taxes, these are worth asking your tax office about. Both are in the statute, and neither requires a lawyer to start.
1. An installment agreement the collector generally must grant you. Under Tex. Tax Code § 33.02, if you're delinquent on a residence homestead that has a § 11.13 exemption, the tax collector shall enter into an installment agreement at your request — it isn't discretionary — unless you've already had one in the preceding 24 months. The agreement must be in writing, must provide for monthly payments, and for a homestead must run at least 12 months and no more than 36. Here's the part that saves real money: for a homestead agreement, the § 33.01(a) penalty stops accruing on the unpaid balance for the life of the agreement. While you're current under the agreement, the taxing unit generally can't seize and sell the property or file suit. The trade-off is real and you should understand it: signing is treated by statute as an irrevocable admission of liability for the taxes, penalties and interest covered, and defaulting on a payment puts collection back on the table.
2. A deferral if you're 65 or older, disabled, or a disabled veteran. Under Tex. Tax Code § 33.06, a qualifying homeowner can file a tax deferral affidavit and postpone collection on their homestead. During the deferral, no penalty accrues and interest runs at 5% per year instead of the punishing 1%-per-month schedule. This is a postponement, not forgiveness: the tax lien stays on the property, the balance keeps growing slowly, and once the deferral ends the full amount comes due within about 180 days before it is treated as delinquent again. For a homeowner whose income won't stretch but who wants to stay in the house, it can be the difference between keeping it and losing it. Ask the Hidalgo County Tax Office for the deferral affidavit, and confirm the current rate and timing — secondary sources disagree on the details, and the statute controls.
Texas probate is often simpler and cheaper than people expect, because Texas has several routes that avoid a fully court-supervised administration. Which one fits depends mostly on whether there's a will and whether the estate has unpaid debts.
If there's a will and no real debts beyond mortgages secured by real estate, probate as a muniment of title (Tex. Est. Code ch. 257) may be available. The will is admitted to probate purely to establish title, and no personal representative is appointed at all — there's no administration to run. It's also the route sometimes used when more than four years have passed since the death and the will was never probated.
If an administration is needed, Texas's signature tool is independent administration (ch. 401), where the executor operates with very little ongoing court supervision — in the main, notice to creditors and beneficiaries, and a sworn inventory, appraisement and list of claims (or an affidavit in lieu of inventory) filed within 90 days. A will can direct it; and where the will doesn't name an independent executor, it can still be created if the heirs have been determined in a proceeding to determine heirship and all of them consent.
If there's no will, two affidavit routes exist, and they are not interchangeable. A small estate affidavit (ch. 205) is for estates whose value, excluding the homestead and exempt property, falls under the statutory cap — commonly cited as $75,000 — requires at least 30 days to have passed since the death, requires every heir under Texas intestacy law to sign, and must be approved by a judge. An affidavit of heirship (ch. 203) is a different animal: it has no dollar cap and is the usual instrument for real property, signed by two disinterested witnesses who knew the decedent. Its limitation is the one that catches sellers out — an affidavit of heirship does not by itself adjudicate title; it becomes prima facie evidence of the facts it states after it has been on file for five years, and individual title companies differ in how much weight they'll give one before then. If a sale is the goal, ask the title company what it will accept before choosing a route.
A Hidalgo County probate attorney can usually identify the right path in one conversation, and we're glad to coordinate with one. (General information, not legal advice — the dollar thresholds and procedural requirements are set by statute and change, so confirm the current rules.)
If a house passed to several relatives and some of them want to sell while others don't, Texas has a specific statute for exactly that situation — and it changed the balance of power meaningfully. The Uniform Partition of Heirs' Property Act, Tex. Prop. Code ch. 23A, took effect in 2017 and applies instead of the general partition statute when land qualifies as "heirs' property."
Broadly, land is heirs' property when it's held as a tenancy in common with no written agreement among all the co-owners governing partition, at least one co-owner acquired title from a relative, and a threshold share of the interests (20% or more, among other alternatives) is held by relatives or by people who got title from a relative. In a partition suit, the court has to decide whether the land meets that definition — and if it does, chapter 23A governs unless all the cotenants agree otherwise in a record.
What that gets you: when one co-owner asks the court for a partition by sale, the court gives notice and any other cotenant may elect to buy out the requesting cotenant's interest, generally within 45 days of that notice, at a price based on a court-appointed appraisal rather than whatever a forced auction happens to bring. The statute also prefers keeping the land in the family where that's workable: the court may order a physical division, and orders a sale only after finding that dividing the property would substantially prejudice the cotenants as a group.
The practical upshot for a Hidalgo County family: a single relative can no longer easily force the whole property onto the auction block at a discount, and a relative who wants out has a defined mechanism for getting out. If you're the one who wants out, selling your share is sometimes possible without a lawsuit at all. (General information, not legal advice — section numbers and the definition's details are statutory, and secondary summaries of chapter 23A are frequently wrong about both. Confirm with a Texas real estate attorney.)
One piece of local context, because it changes what "just list it" really costs. As of July 2026, Texas A&M's Real Estate Research Center put the McAllen–Edinburg–Mission metro at roughly 113 days to sell and about 9.2 months of inventory — and six months is the conventional line between a seller's and a buyer's market. Other sources that quarter put median days on market closer to 90. Either way, a conventional listing here is not a fast exit, and that's before repairs, showings and a financing contingency. If you're working against a first-Tuesday foreclosure date or a tax deadline, the gap between a three-month marketing period and a two-week cash close is the whole decision. If you have time and the house shows well, listing will usually net you more — and we'll tell you so.
Related guides: Foreclosure · Probate & Inherited · Back Taxes · Liens & Title · As-Is / Repairs · Selling a Partial Interest · FAQ · Sell My House Fast in McAllen
En español: Vender su casa en McAllen
Local guides for McAllen: Stop foreclosure in McAllen · Back property taxes in McAllen · Inherited house in McAllen
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