Foreclosure is quoted at $4,800 and an heir just offered me a payoff

The decision turns on how your state handles two things, and both are answerable before Friday.

First, whether your legal costs are recoverable in the redemption amount. Many lien states allow a certificate holder who has begun the statutory foreclosure or deed process to add specified costs to the payoff, often including service and publication and sometimes attorney fees, and many limit or exclude fees entirely. That single provision changes the shape of the downside. If costs are recoverable and the servicer redeems at month four, you're roughly where you are now plus interest on a larger base. If they aren't, the $4,800 to $6,500 is at risk against an outcome you don't control. Your attorney can tell you which it is in that state, and get it in writing.

Second, the probate defect. An estate that was never properly opened means the parties who must be served may not be identifiable from the record, and in stricter due process states an insufficiently served party can attack the deed afterward. That risk doesn't end at the deed, it follows you into the resale, because a title company deciding whether to insure will look at exactly that service list. Ask the attorney directly what the path to insurable title looks like and whether a separate quiet title action is likely on top of the current estimate.

On the granddaughter, she can redeem through the treasurer whether or not you agree to wait, subject to the deadlines in your statute. An informal promise from you doesn't change her rights or yours. If you'd take $8,720 today, the question is whether the state lets you keep the meter running while she raises it.

$58k to $65k as is, from a wholesaler, on a small frame house in a market where the taxes went unpaid for three years and the owner died four years ago. I'd want that number from somebody who isn't in the business of getting you excited. In the rural markets I look at, the gap between as is and actually sold on a house that's been empty since 2021 is not small.

Has anyone asked what the inside of the house looks like? Nothing in the post says it's been seen since the sale.

@beacon that's the question I'd want answered before Friday too. Between @orchard's servicer point and @hollow's doubt about the $58k, the foreclosure path is a $5,000 bet on a value nobody has verified and a title process with a probate hole in it. 13% simple over three years for doing nothing but paying subs on time is the thing you actually built. Quarry, if you do decide to push, I'd want to know what the attorney thinks the service list looks like with an unopened estate before I spent the retainer.