Straight answers, including the uncomfortable ones.

Public county records. Tax rolls, clerk filings, probate filings and foreclosure postings are all public documents that anyone can look up, online or at the county clerk's office.

We did not buy your information from a data broker, and we have no access to anything about you that isn't already public. If you'd like to see the actual record we found, ask and we'll send it to you.

Don't take our word for it — check. Everything below is independently verifiable in a few minutes:

• Gulf Alpha LLC, Texas filing number 0803383478 — searchable in the Texas Secretary of State and Comptroller records.
• Owned by Fredo Hernandez, a licensed Texas real estate broker, TREC license #713703 — searchable by name or number in the Texas Real Estate Commission's public lookup. A licensed broker answers to a state regulator and has a license to lose. An anonymous cash buyer has neither.
• A real street address: 5161 San Felipe St Ste 320, Houston, TX 77056.
• In business since August 2019, in residential real estate since 2011.

And the structural point that matters more than any credential: money only ever moves toward you. There is no version of this where you pay us anything, which removes the mechanism nearly every property scam depends on.

Because we make outgoing calls and texts from several lines, and our main published number is a receiving line we deliberately keep out of outbound calling. So the caller ID you saw is usually not the number printed at the top of this page.

That mismatch is exactly the kind of thing that makes a person suspicious, so every number we use is published here. They all ring through to the same place — you can call back on whichever one contacted you, or on our main line, and you'll reach the same person.

No. Not a fee, not a deposit, not "processing costs," not anything. We don't need your bank details to make an offer, and we never will.

At an actual closing a title company may need standard identification and payment instructions to send you your money — but that is the title company, at a closing you have agreed to, and it is money coming to you.

No. We never ask anyone for money, under any circumstances, for any reason. If someone asked you for a payment, a deposit, a gift card, a wire, or your bank login while claiming to be us, it was not us.

Please don't send them anything. Call our main line at 713-510-3036 and we'll tell you straight away whether the contact was really from us, and you can check the number against our published list.

Yes. One request, by any method — call, text, email, or telling us on the phone — and you're off our list permanently. You don't have to explain why and we won't ask you to.

Gulf Alpha LLC is a real estate investment company. It is not a brokerage and not a law firm. We're not attorneys, we don't represent you, and we don't give legal advice — when a situation needs a lawyer we say so.

There is one thing we'd rather state plainly than have you discover later: Gulf Alpha is owned by Fredo Hernandez, a licensed Texas real estate broker (TREC #713703). That license does not make us your agent. When we contact you we are acting as a buyer for our own account — we represent ourselves, talking to us creates no agency relationship, and you owe us no commission or fee. The license exists so we can pull real market data and sell properties we already own.

If what you actually need is someone to put your house on the market, that's a different job and not one we do. We'd tell you to go talk to a listing agent.

For a normal house with clean title, you shouldn't — list it, and you'll do better. We're not a substitute for the open market and we won't pretend to be.

The properties we buy are the ones where listing doesn't work: title can't convey, an estate was never opened, co-owners won't agree or can't be found, a foreclosure date arrives before a listing could ever close. A realtor can't sell what can't be conveyed, and a retail buyer's lender won't fund it. If listing is genuinely available to you, we'll say so.

No. And you should ask this of every buyer who approaches you, because it is the most common real harm in this business — and it isn't a scam, it's a business model.

Here's the version to watch for. A buyer ties your property up under contract, then spends the next several weeks trying to sell that contract to somebody else at a markup. If they can't find a buyer, they cancel. You get the property back with your foreclosure date weeks closer, other options expired, and nothing to show for the time. Everything they did was legal and disclosed in the paperwork you signed.

We never assign a contract. We close ourselves, or we double close — meaning we buy it and then sell it in a separate transaction afterward. Either way we actually take title, and the risk transfers to us at closing the way it's supposed to.

We also don't sign a contract thinking we have an escape hatch. If a deal is narrow, or we doubt we can make the margin we need, we pass at the beginning instead of tying it up and deciding later. The reason we can operate that way is unglamorous: there is far more of this work available than we can take on. A buyer who needs every deal is a buyer who signs first and thinks second.

We make money by buying property at a price that accounts for the problems attached to it, then spending our own time and money resolving those problems. That's the whole business, and we'd rather say it plainly than perform altruism.

What follows from it is genuinely useful to you, though: we only make money if the deal actually closes and the title actually clears. A transaction that collapses halfway costs us the money we've already spent on it. That means we have no incentive to talk you into something that falls apart, and a strong incentive to tell you early if your situation isn't one we can help with.

Usually not. In Texas the property is still yours until the auction actually happens, and it can be sold right up to that point. Selling beforehand is almost always better than letting the auction proceed: a foreclosure wipes out whatever equity you had and follows your credit for years, whereas a sale before that date can put some of that equity in your pocket instead.

The earlier you call, the more options exist. That's not a sales line, it's arithmetic — some paths take two weeks to execute and simply stop being available.

This matters more than most people realize, because the deadline in the letter and the deadline that actually governs are often different things. Texas foreclosure sales happen on the first Tuesday of the month, and notice requirements set fixed dates before that. Reinstatement periods, the posting date, and the date a servicer stops accepting partial payments are all separate deadlines that don't fall on the same day.

Ask us and we'll tell you which dates apply to your specific posting and which have already passed. If the honest answer is that the useful window has closed, we'll tell you that too.

Honestly, that's your call, and we're not going to push you.

Here's the argument, and then you can weigh it yourself. If the property goes to auction, whatever equity is in it is gone — the lender takes what it's owed, the fees come out, and in practice what's left rarely finds its way back to you. There's a line we're fond of: a little bit of something is better than all of nothing.

A completed foreclosure also does more damage to your credit than a sale does, and it takes the decision out of your hands entirely — the date arrives whether you're ready or not.

But if you've thought about it and you'd rather let it go, that's a legitimate choice and we won't try to talk you out of it.

Straight answer: by this point it's very likely already hurt. Missed mortgage payments, a tax suit, or a posted foreclosure will each have done damage before you ever heard from us.

What we can tell you is that selling will hurt less than a completed foreclosure will. A foreclosure is one of the more damaging single entries that can land on a credit file and it stays there for years. A sale is just a sale.

We're not credit counselors and won't pretend to be. If that's your main concern, it's worth an hour with someone who is.

Yes — properties with delinquent taxes are a large part of what we buy. The balance gets settled at closing out of the purchase price. You don't need to pay anything down first, and you don't need to work out a payment plan before talking to us.

Still workable, and still worth moving quickly. Once a tax suit is filed, attorney's fees and court costs get added on top of the taxes, penalties and interest, and the balance grows faster. A judgment and an order of sale are further steps down that road, each of which reduces what's left for you.

Many owners in this position have real equity and no way to produce cash to clear the balance. That's a solvable problem, and it's one of the most common situations we see.

Contractor and mechanic's liens, HOA and condominium assessments, abstracts of judgment, child support liens, IRS and state tax liens, and old mortgages that were paid but never released — all of them attach to the property and have to be dealt with before clean title can transfer. A retail buyer's title company will simply refuse to close.

We buy subject to these and resolve them as the purchaser, at our own cost and risk. Some get paid at closing, some get negotiated down, some turn out to be invalid or expired. That research is our job, not yours. Priority matters enormously here — who stands where in line changes what the property is worth to anyone, and it is the thing most often gotten wrong.

Then it can't be sold yet — not by anyone. When someone dies the house doesn't automatically become the heirs' property to sell; title has to be vested through probate or, where there was no will, a proceeding to determine heirship.

Families routinely discover this years later, often when taxes have gone unpaid the entire time because everyone assumed someone else was handling it. We've bought through probate, through heirship determinations, and through affidavits of heirship. An estate that was never opened is a normal situation for us, not a dealbreaker, and we cover the cost of sorting it out.

First, the practical part: you don't need to know what an affidavit of heirship is, or how to prepare one. If a purchase needs one, we handle it and we pay for it. But since you asked, here's what it actually means.

Sometimes it is a problem, and it's worth knowing which case you're in before you need the answer urgently. An affidavit of heirship is a sworn statement recorded in the county records; it is not a court determination and it doesn't bind anyone who disagrees with it. Plenty of families run on one for decades without incident.

The problem surfaces at the moment of sale, when a title company has to decide whether it will insure title based on that affidavit. Sometimes it will. Sometimes it requires a formal administration or an heirship proceeding instead — and that takes time you may not have if there's a sale date posted.

This is exactly the sort of question we ask early, because the answer changes what's possible and how long it takes.

In most cases, yes. When several people inherit a property, each owns an undivided fractional interest in the whole thing. Your interest is your property — you can generally sell it on your own, without the other owners' consent and without a partition lawsuit.

We buy individual interests regularly. You sell us your share, and the property and the people attached to it become our problem rather than yours. We can keep the transaction confidential, and we deal with the remaining owners ourselves afterward. If your situation is one of the exceptions, we'll tell you.

Yes. There is no minimum interest we won't look at — including 1%. What matters is the dollar amount, not the percentage: a small share of a valuable property can be worth more than a large share of a cheap one.

A lot of people never call because they assume a fractional interest is worthless. Usually it isn't worthless — it's illiquid, which is a completely different problem, and it's the one we exist to solve. Nobody else wants to buy a piece of a house they can't control, which is exactly why the market price of your share looks like nothing. Ask, and we'll give you a number.

They keep their interests. We step into your position as a co-owner and deal with them from there. They don't lose their ownership, and nothing about your sale forces them to sell theirs.

They also don't have to know what you were paid. Plenty of people in this position specifically don't want that conversation with their family, and we can handle our side of it discreetly.

Common, and not fatal. Missing, unresponsive, or unknown heirs are one of the main reasons these properties sit for years while taxes accrue. There are established ways to deal with it — genealogical research, formal heirship proceedings, service by publication — and they cost money and take time, which is why families rarely pursue them alone.

When we buy an interest, that work becomes ours to do and ours to pay for.

Yes. The property has to be in our area. You don't.

We buy in Harris, Galveston, Brazoria, Montgomery, and Fort Bend counties, and that's about where the house is, not where you are. Heirs scatter — it's completely normal for us to buy from someone who hasn't seen the property in twenty years and never intends to.

We send a licensed mobile notary to you wherever you are, anywhere in the United States or internationally, and we pay for it. You never have to travel to Texas, visit an office, or arrange anything yourself.

Doesn't matter. We buy as-is, in whatever condition the property is in. Take what matters to you and leave everything else — no repairs, no cleanout, no dumpster, no judgment. We've bought properties needing anything from a light clean to a full teardown.

Because we buy at a discount. That's the business and we won't pretend otherwise.

What we will do is explain where the number comes from: what's owed, what it costs to clear the title problems, what the risk is that they can't be cleared, and how long it's likely to take. Our broker license gives us access to real market data, so we're working from what comparable properties actually sold for rather than a number we invented. Ask us anything about it — you'll never get a figure from us with nothing behind it.

The comparison that matters isn't our offer against a Zillow estimate. It's our offer against what you could actually net, given that the property in its current condition can't be conveyed to a retail buyer at all. Sometimes that gap is small and selling to us is clearly right. Sometimes it's large enough that you should do something else — and we'll say so.

If you're selling a share rather than a whole property, there's a second thing going on and it's the one people find hardest: a 25% interest is not worth 25% of the house. What makes a house valuable is that someone can own all of it, and a fraction can't be lived in, financed, or sold on the open market. We explain that in full on the heir buyouts page rather than spring it on you during a call.

We research the property at our own expense first: title, liens and their priority, taxes and penalties, who the heirs are and what's been filed, payoff amounts, and what's actually scheduled. That takes days, not minutes, and it's the part of this work that most buyers skip.

Then we work backward from what the property can realistically be worth once the problems are resolved, subtract what resolving them costs and the risk that some of it fails, and that produces a number. You get the reasoning behind it, not just the conclusion — and any question you ask about it gets a straight answer.

Because the money doesn't run through us.

On a whole-property purchase a licensed title company handles the funds. You can call them directly, they're accountable to their own licensing and to the underwriter behind them, and they have considerably more to lose than we do if they mishandle a closing.

On a partial interest a licensed notary witnesses the signing, and you're paid in front of them.

Either way there is an independent professional present whose job is to confirm the transaction happened as described, and a recorded deed afterward as permanent public evidence of it. You aren't relying on our word — and you shouldn't have to.

If it's good, take it.

We mean that plainly. We're not going to talk you out of a better number, and we'd rather you took it than felt worked over.

If you don't like it, tell us why. Sometimes the problem isn't the number at all — it's the terms, the timeline, or whether that buyer can actually close on a property in your situation. Those are things we can sometimes fix and a retail buyer can't. And if the other offer is simply better, we'll say so.

No. No fees, no commissions — there's no realtor involved and we are not acting as your agent — and no closing costs charged to you. You never pay us anything at any stage.

And the number we agree on is the number you receive. Nothing comes off it at closing, nothing is deducted afterward, nothing gets trued up. If we say a figure, that figure is what lands.

This surprises people, and reasonably so: in a normal home sale the offer and the net are two very different numbers, because commission, title fees and closing costs all come off the top. Here they don't — we pay them.

On the terms written into the offer — which you'll have seen before you sign anything. Most often that's the full amount at signing. Where a situation is complicated it can instead be structured across signing and closing. The schedule is never a surprise.

On a whole-property purchase, a licensed title company runs the closing, confirms everything is legitimate, and disburses your funds. You can call them directly to verify anything.

On a partial interest, title companies generally won't issue a policy on a fraction of a property, so the deed can transfer directly instead: you sign in front of a notary and are paid at the same moment. Payment can be a cashier's check, a wire, or cash — whichever you'd prefer, just tell us. If you'd rather bring a title company into that closing anyway, ask and we'll arrange it.

Either way a licensed notary witnesses your signature and the deed is recorded in the county's public records permanently. We come to you, whenever suits you, and we pay the notary.

It depends entirely on what's attached to the property, and anyone who gives you a number before looking is guessing. A clean partial-interest purchase can happen in days. A property that needs an heirship proceeding first takes months, because a court is involved and courts have their own pace.

When there's a foreclosure sale date, speed becomes the whole problem and we'll tell you honestly whether it's achievable.

We tell you which property we're calling about and how we found it, and then we ask a lot of questions — more than most people expect. Who the heirs are and whether any have died since. Whether an administration was ever opened. What's owed, to whom, and in what priority. What's actually scheduled.

It's closer to how a doctor reaches a diagnosis than to how a house gets sold, because the recommendation is worthless if the diagnosis is wrong. Nothing is decided on that call and nothing is signed.

That's negotiable, and more flexible than most people expect. Tell us what you actually need and we'll work from there — a couple of weeks, a couple of months, whatever the situation genuinely requires.

The usual mechanism is that a portion of your funds is held at the title company until you're out. That's our security rather than a penalty, and the amount and the date are agreed in writing before you sign anything.

We'd much rather set a date you can actually meet than one that sounds good on a phone call and then falls apart on you.

Take what matters to you and leave the rest. We buy as-is, and we're not going to go through your belongings.

If moving is the actual obstacle — and for a lot of people it is — say so. We can help with moving or storage costs. It isn't a standard line item; it's just a problem we'd rather solve than lose a deal over. Tell us what you need and we'll work it out.

You're always welcome to have one, and for anything you're unsure about we'd encourage it. We are not your lawyers and we don't give legal advice.

A title company and an attorney do work on every purchase we make — but they work on our side of the transaction, not yours. That stays true even where we offer to point you toward that same firm for background, which we explain below. Anyone already working with us cannot also be your independent adviser, and we won't pretend otherwise.

And we'll pay for it. We cover an hour of an attorney's time — your attorney, of your choosing — so that someone independent can confirm that what we've told you is actually true. This is written into our offers, not just said on a phone call, so you can hold us to it.

We do it because the information gap in these situations is real and it runs in our favor. We do this work every day; you may be doing it once in your life. You are being asked to believe things about foreclosure deadlines, lien priority, and what an affidavit of heirship can and can't do — and you have no particular reason to take our word for any of it. An hour with your own lawyer is the cheapest way to close that gap. If they tell you we've got something wrong, you'll have found that out on our money.

If you'd rather not go find one yourself

We can point you to a firm that handles probate, heirship, and distressed title in these counties every single day — which most general-practice lawyers do not. It is the same firm that works our transactions, so to be blunt about it: they are not independent of us.

That's a fair thing to use them for and an unfair thing to use them for, so here's the line we draw. They're a good source for how the mechanics work — what an affidavit of heirship actually does, what a posting date means, where a lien sits in priority. They are not the right people to advise you on whether selling to us is a good idea, because they have a relationship with us and you deserve someone who doesn't. For that question, use your own attorney and we'll pay for it. Same offer, same hour, no argument.

On the amount: we cover up to $400 for the hour, which comfortably covers an experienced real estate or probate attorney in the Houston area. We state a number rather than "a reasonable amount" so there is nothing to argue about later. It won't stretch to a partner's hourly rate at a national firm, and we'd rather tell you that up front than surprise you with it.

You're also welcome to have anyone else you trust review documents before you sign. We've never once objected to that, and a buyer who did would be telling you something.

Before you sign, yes — at any point, including after we've made an offer. There's nothing to cancel and no deadline we impose. Foreclosure sale dates are real and we'll be honest about them, but we won't invent any others as leverage.

After you sign, it's a binding contract — for us as much as for you. A signed purchase agreement is enforceable exactly as it would be with any buyer, and we'd rather tell you that up front than have it come as a surprise. It's the same reason we don't back out of signed deals ourselves. Read it before you sign it, and have your own attorney read it on our money.

Then we tell you that. Sometimes the right answer is a loan modification, or a listing agent, or an heirship proceeding you complete yourselves and then sell on the open market for materially more. Sometimes it's doing nothing at all.

We'd rather spend an hour reaching that conclusion than talk someone into a transaction that wasn't in their interest. We're going to be in these same five counties next year and the year after.