Paul Cooke - SELLING AN INHERITED HOUSE

all the options allows you to make an informed decision that benefits all those involved. If the house goes to probate, even if there are no residents, the property must be maintained. The property taxes, insurance premiums, utilities, homeowners association fees, and other ongoing costs must be paid by someone. Either that or the property can lose value or even be lost totally. Depending on how long the probate period lasts, families may need to pay for many months of maintenance, along with the legal fees and other expenses connected to owning and selling the property. At the end of the probate, you may also have to go through the effort and expenditure of repairing and selling the home. Under such conditions, you can very possibly lose more than you make (including your time and effort), thus it may be wisest to simply sell the home to investors. There are numerous options that a good realtor can help provide, if this is the direction you wish to pursue. Another somewhat common solution is for one of the heirs to buy the property from the others. Ordinarily, if you inherit the home with your siblings without any remaining mortgage, the rule is that ownership is to be evenly split unless otherwise stated in the will. If one of the siblings is interested in keeping it while the others want to sell it, the interested sibling can buy out the others using conventional financing or cash. The cost involved in this process can be minimal and includes the appraiser’s fees and the closing costs. If this will work, you pay your siblings in cash for their shares and get the title of the property transferred into your sole name through a deed. Make sure you have a good attorney to cover all the bases and help make the process as smooth as possible.

Alternatively, a private agreement can prove useful under some

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