Sell an inherited house in Houston

Everything about the timeline depends on this, and there are more answers in Texas than in most states.

If there is a will, it is probated — through a full independent administration, or through the shorter muniment-of-title route when the estate owes nothing beyond debts secured by liens on real estate. If the person who died recorded a transfer on death deed before they died, the house passed to the named beneficiary at death without probate at all; the deed has to have been recorded in the deed records of the county where the property sits, before the death, to work. If there is no will and no such deed, the heirs are established by a court determination or, over time, by an affidavit of heirship recorded in the county.

We have a separate page on the probate process itself. The short version for this page: tell us which of these you are on, or that you do not know, and we will tell you what a realistic closing date looks like.

Texas is a community property state. Property either spouse possessed during the marriage is presumed to be community property, and overcoming that presumption takes clear and convincing evidence.

When someone dies without a will, the surviving spouse takes the deceased spouse's half of the community property only if every child of the person who died is also the surviving spouse's child. If there is a child from an earlier relationship, the deceased spouse's half passes to the children instead. The surviving spouse keeps their own half and nothing more.

In practice this means a second wife or husband living in the family house may own exactly half of it, with the other half belonging to stepchildren they may not be on speaking terms with. Nobody can sell the whole house without everyone. It is the single most common reason an inherited Houston house sits unsold for years, and it is worth an hour with a probate attorney before anyone makes a plan.

A seller of a Texas house is generally required to give the buyer a written seller's disclosure notice on the statutory form, or one substantially like it. The form asks specific questions, and those include flood questions: whether the house has flood insurance, whether it has flooded from a reservoir failure or release, whether water has come into the structure in a natural flood, and whether the property sits in a 100-year or 500-year floodplain, a floodway, a flood pool, or a reservoir.

The statute exempts certain transfers from the notice altogether — among them a transfer by a fiduciary in the course of administering an estate, a transfer from one co-owner to another, a transfer to a spouse or to someone in the lineal line of consanguinity, and a transfer under a court order or at a foreclosure sale. Whether your sale is exempt depends on who is signing the deed and in what capacity, and that is a question for the title company and, if you have one, your attorney.

Exempt or not, we ask the flood questions ourselves. If you know the house took water in Harvey or in a later storm, or if you do not know because you did not live there, say so. Whoever buys the house from us will be entitled to the same disclosure, and we would rather price it correctly than discover it later.

Texas property taxes become delinquent if not paid before February 1 of the year after they are billed, and an inherited house is a house whose bills stopped being watched. In Harris County the appraised value is set by the Harris Central Appraisal District — HCAD — and the other counties in the metro each have their own appraisal district.

Delinquent taxes, unpaid utility bills that have been turned into liens, and city assessments for mowing an empty lot all attach to the house and all come off the top of a sale. None of them are a reason not to sell. All of them are a reason to sell sooner rather than later, because each one is compounding while the family talks.

Take what you want and leave the rest. We buy houses with forty years of belongings in them, and clearing them is part of what we do after closing. You do not need to hold an estate sale, rent a dumpster, or make three trips from out of state.

A house that has been empty in the Houston climate needs to be looked at with that in mind. Humidity does things to a closed-up house that a dry climate does not, and a roof that has been leaking quietly for a couple of summers has usually done more than it looks like from the driveway. None of that is a reason we decline. It is information that goes into the number, and we would rather hear it from you.

The death certificate. The will, if there is one, or the transfer on death deed if one was recorded. Anything a court has issued. The most recent property tax statement. And the names of everyone who might have a claim to the house — every child, every spouse, including former ones — so nobody is surprised at the closing table.