What does it mean to sell a home in an estate?
That’s where somebody’s passed away, and now it’s in their estate. It depends on whether they have a will, or what state you’re in, or whether it needs to go to probate to be passed on to the next heir.
You would help a seller through that process, you’re going to make sure that they’ve gone through the right channels in order to sell?
Yes. Sometimes, maybe the mother has passed away previously, you have to check with title to see if they were on there as joint tenants or tenants in common, you have to get death certificates. We have to do some title work, and then usually it has to go through probate in order to be able to sell the house; we can guide you through that whole process.
Can you walk through a couple of the steps for selling a house in an estate or an inherited home?
Normally you’re going to need a probate attorney. Then also we’ll run a title search to see who was on the title and how they were on the title. Then the attorney goes to the courts in order to see if there are any other heirs. They’ll mail out and reach out to other people who have potential interest in the estate where they can make a claim to the estate, and then they end up awarding somebody as the personal representative. That’s in a nutshell how the process works.
What if you’re selling an inherited property that has multiple owners?
Yeah. We would help them run the title search. We can refer a few attorneys and let them choose what probate attorney they would like to use. I have people that sometimes can help with clearing some of the stuff out of the house, or after they get what they want they can remove it, so we can help in a lot of different ways throughout the whole process. Obviously, we can comp their house and tell them what we think they should do in order to get top value. Yeah, we’ll guide them through the whole process.
This can sometimes be an emotional sale, and some sellers might not want to sell their home to somebody who’s going to turn it into a rental. Is it possible to know the intentions of a buyer?
Yes, and no. Sometimes somebody you sell it to, could say they’re doing one thing and they’re doing another, and you can’t limit them on what they can do with the property; that’s their right as the new property owner. If our organization is buying it, we told you we’re going to flip it, that’s what we would do. Unless some wild circumstances changed and we couldn’t sell it, we had to rent it. But, yeah, I can understand that a lot. I’ve had multiple people who are excited to see the property after it’s done because they want to see what it looks like, its former glory days with new texture, trends, and cabinets. We’ve had quite a few owners want to come back there; siblings or heirs want to come back through and look at the property and it’s pretty cool.
Are people able to do that? I’ve recently sold my parent’s home and I get the inkling to want to go back and see the home after they’ve renovated it or fixed it; is that common?
Yeah. When we buy them, usually we’ll let them know, if they want to. Some are out-of-state, we’ll send them pictures after it’s renovated to show them when we’re going to list it, to resell it after it’s been renovated. But we’re always open to them coming back and seeing it as we list it, or right before we list it, or right after we do. In that scenario, yes.
If you sell the home to another buyer, have you ever been requested for someone wanting information about that buyer to be able to go back and see the home?
I actually haven’t, and sometimes that’s tough. I guess it depends on what the buyer is doing with it. Because some buyers might say, hey, I’m moving in here and I don’t want you to come back. Again, once they own it, that is their choice, and their property now, and what they want to do with it. But I would think that someone would let you take a look at it if they were renovating it to resell it, yeah.
You touched on it briefly, but how do you help sellers sell the estate, the personal property, how do you have an estate sale?
We don’t do that. But again, we have some referrals that we can refer you to. On the estate sale, we started to run into quite a few people who have just decided to do it on their own. But we’re happy to make recommendations on local estate sale companies.
Has there ever been a tough situation you’ve been in, or some tough sells with properties because it’s an emotional sale?
Yeah, it is an emotional sale. It’s hard, we’ve been in properties where they grew up there, and this was their bedroom, and this is where they used to play in the backyard on the swing set. I always think that’s really neat to hear those stories. We take pride in rejuvenating the house so another family can make memories and have a future, and they can have the same type of legacy. Have the same memories that previous owners and heirs have had. It is sometimes a tough process, and sometimes the siblings don’t get along, and there’s that issue too. That’s sometimes where an investor comes in handy because it’s just easier at that point in time just to sell and be done because one person wants to do this with it, one person wants to rent it, one person wants to sell it. Sometimes that scenario is good for an investor also.
If someone is looking to sell a home that they’ve inherited through an estate, what would be the first step for them to work with you?
The first step would be to call us out, and once we have the address, we can run a title search with the title company. Get you in touch with an attorney who would check to see if there’s a will, we can meet you at the property, kind of assess, and figure out what to do for repairs. What you want, and how we can help in that regard to getting your property ready to list. In the meantime, while it’s going through the probate process, or we can figure out a price for a cash buy once they become personal representative after it’s gone through the court process and then are able to sell the property.
Is there a typical timeframe for these sales, or does it really depend on the court process?
There are some things that can throw a monkey wrench in there if somebody else makes a claim if there are heirs that aren’t getting along on what to do with it. But normally, if you get an attorney involved right away, it seems to be about a 60-day process, give or take. That’s not a guarantee. But that seems to be about the average.