Five Steps to Selling Your Late Parents’ Home

Line up help

You’ll need at least three on-site professionals to help you sell: an appraiser, a real estate agent and an attorney. An appraiser should give you a valuation for the home as it stands today, which is important for tax purposes when you sell the home, Gifford says. You might also get a home inspection of the major systems, including the roof, plumbing and electrical. These are the matters any buyer will be concerned about and could affect their ability to get a loan. A real estate agent with local expertise can price the home correctly for sale and shepherd it through the sale process, says Danny Hertzberg, a sales associate with the Jills Zeder Group brokerage in Miami. The agent can be especially helpful if you and your siblings no longer live nearby, handling issues such as access to the home for repairs, showings and inspections. The real estate attorney can help with any outstanding issues, including unpaid taxes and missing paperwork, as well as handle the transaction if the house is held in a trust.

“Having experts involved can make the experience so much easier and can provide the necessary guidance throughout the process,” says Julie Cwik, senior underwriting counsel at Proper Title, a title insurance agency in Chicago.

Assess outstanding property debts

Your real estate agent or real estate attorney will run a preliminary title report, which will show if there are any mortgages or liens on the home, says Betsy Phillips, a senior real estate expert with Compass in Glenview, Illinois. That’s when you might learn that your parents had a second or reverse mortgage. If that’s the case, the executor should continue to pay any outstanding loans, Phillips says. “Once the closing of the property takes place and all liens are paid in full, then the equity remaining will be distributed according to owners’ directives,” she says.

Even if your parents no longer had a mortgage, it’s not uncommon for older homeowners to forget to pay their property taxes since they may be used to it being a part of their monthly mortgage payment, Cwik says. A title search could also reveal whether there’s a mechanic’s lien — an unpaid invoice for work done on the home, by a general contractor, for example.

Any of these outstanding issues can hold up a sale or result in a contract falling through, so you want to get them cleared up as soon as possible. Keep in mind that any money owed will be among the first payments settled with the proceeds from the sale.

Maintain the home

An uninhabited home is ripe for developing maintenance issues. In a warm climate, mold can be a concern; in colder conditions, a pipe could freeze and burst. An unwatched roof could develop a leak that isn’t discovered for weeks. You need to pay utility bills, so the power stays on and the water keeps flowing. Then there are appearances: Make sure the yard is maintained and snow is shoveled, as a property that looks abandoned is more likely to be vandalized. To keep up appearances, you can hire a handyman or lawn maintenance crew — maybe the people who did this work for your parents when they were alive, or someone recommended by a real estate agent. Or you could simply pay a neighbor or family friend to do the work. If you aren’t yet able to access an estate’s bank account to pay these expenses, keep an itemized list of payments in order to be reimbursed later.

You want to maintain insurance on the house and let the insurance company know the home is vacant, advises Joe Allen, a real estate broker at RE/MAX Results in Edina, Minnesota. Otherwise, the insurer might not pay a claim for theft and damage, he says. Instead, you can buy a vacant building insurance policy, which will cost more but protect you against losses.

If siblings can’t take on maintenance responsibilities, you’ll have to rely on a neighbor to make regular checks or hire a property manager. Ask your real estate agent for a recommendation. “They may be able to help you manage the property or provide you with the contacts you need,” Allen says.

Now cleared of important personal belongings, the Tannazzo home can be shown to potential buyers.

Courtesy Jaclyn Tannazzo

Prepare for the sale

Talk to your real estate agent about how much work the house needs to ready it for the market. What holds true for an inherited home is the same as for any home, says Meredith Moore, CEO of Artisan Financial Strategies in Atlanta: Don’t invest in renovations if you’re unlikely to get much more money out of the sale than what you’ll put in. “Just get it sold,” Moore says. Unless your agent recommends an “as is” sale, make the home as clean as possible, painting and fixing any glaring problems.

If the house has any modifications to accommodate an aging parent, Phillips suggests removing them and making consequent repairs. She and her siblings, for example, hired someone to remove the stair lift in their late mother’s home, then sand and stain the stairs. “I would also recommend removing anything on the outside of the home such as ramps,” she says. “These are often makeshift and can be unsightly.”

Finally, be aware that clearing your parents’ possessions from the house to make it presentable and salable may be a painful process preventing you from moving forward. Because this task was slowing her down, Jacyln Tannazzo ended up hiring someone to clear her parents’ house and store certain items so she and her sister could go through them later. “I used to joke with my mom that ‘You’ve got to get rid of this stuff, ” Tannazzo says. “And she’d say, ‘Oh, that’s your problem someday.’ And she was right. It was.”