Selling Off Your Parent’s House after You Inherit It Part 2 of 6

Sibling rivalry usually rears its ugly head when the parent passes on, and the beneficiaries need to divide the estate amongst the beneficiaries. When we have disputes, you are looking at a lengthy and expensive legal process.
If your parents lacked an estate plan before they died, then you have a huge task ahead of you. It remains that with a dispute on the house, selling it off might not be possible till you resolve this dispute amicably.
Here are a few ways to resolve disputes:

• Work with a mediator
  When you disagree with other beneficiaries, you can work with a go-between to solve the problem. A skilled intermediary can help bring some sanity to the argument and bring the beneficiaries together. To get the right mediator, talk to your estate planning lawyer to give you referrals.
• Liquidate the house
  When a few of you lay claim to the property, and don’t seem to agree on who takes it, the best option is to sell it off and then share the proceeds.
• Use an independent fiduciary
  If you don’t trust the executor your parents chose, you have a right to choose a different one. This is only possible if you can afford to pay them.
  You can decide to handle the issue as a family, under the guidance of an estate planning lawyer. Here is a lowdown on how to handle this amicably:
• Understand the person liable for managing the house while the dispute rages on.
• Calculate the expenses that come with managing the house and choose the person responsible for handling the costs.
• If you agree to sell it, understand the costs and decide if the proceeds from the sale will cover this.
• Decide on the distribution of the proceeds from the sale.
• List the duties of each beneficiary in the process.

As a beneficiary, it is ideal to know what the value of the house is according to current market estimates. The aim is to ensure you have the right report for the taxable gain or loss on the house, to keep inventory, and to know how much each person might receive when you sell the house – that if this is what the will demanded. This info is also necessary when you start the estate planning process for your new property.

• Sell It
  The fastest way to value the property is to put it on the market and let buyers bid on it – if this is what the beneficiaries want.
  However, you need to make sure your siblings know of your intention before you go ahead with it; otherwise, it might give rise to other problems.
• Use a Real Estate Agent
  If you don’t plan to sell it, use a real estate agent to get the best estimate. This requires that you put to task a few agents to have a walkthrough and give you an estimate. An excellent real estate agent gives you the right number, not too high and not too low so that he doesn’t get your expectations high.
• Work With a Professional Appraiser
  The most reliable way to know the estimate of the house is to use a professional appraiser. This person comes with an unbiased view of the house and won’t inflate the value for any reason whatsoever. Talk to a banker, realtor, or a mortgage broker to get a recommendation.

When you decide to sell a house you just inherited, you first have to eliminate any issues that might cause hurdles in the process. Sit down with your relatives and find a way to resolve problems the right way. You also need to appraise the house in the current market situation. Talk to an estate planning attorney today to start the process.