Offloading the family ‘estate’ can be a challenge

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Published Date 5/10/2024

The inherited home. Sometimes it’s in a great neighborhood, but often it’s not a desirable “as is” sale for anyone left with the task of selling it.

Realtor.com’s Kimberly Dawn Neumann tells the story of fellow Massachusetts-based agent Kelly Provost, who was contacted by a home seller whose mother had left him her home a year earlier. Thinking he might fix it up himself, he realized at one point that the house required more work than he could handle. So he decided to sell.

The two-bedroom, 1.5-bath, 912-square-foot, ranch-style home was built in 1953 in a now-desirable neighborhood in a city that is home to one of the city’s biggest industrial plants. The house is in close proximity to amenities, public transportation, and access to the highway, had a recently replaced roof, a paved driveway, and hardwood floors, along with a stone fireplace that was updated and working.

Despite all that, the house was a mess inside and it was being sold as is. In other words, what a potential buyer sees is what they get. Repairs would. be on their own dime. Provost was horrified upon entering the property, which was in various stages of being updated. Construction equipment and materials were strewn about, the plumbing had been turned off, and the basement had a leak that showed signs of mold.

“The basement had been finished at one time, but the water damage down there was severe and the basement needed gutting and mold remediation,” says Provost. “The smell was also pretty pungent and hard to overcome.”

The kitchen was another eyesore, with unfinished cabinets and walls and two full-sized refrigerators — one in the middle of the room. She persuaded the seller to empty the home, which took about two months.

Mostly vacant, Provost decided it was ready to be presented as a “rough diamond in the right location” in her listing. “When we finally got there for the photo shoot, we needed to be purposeful to show its potential, but also not be deceptive of its condition and the work needed,” says Provost. “The kitchen is a good example of the workarounds we did, trying not to focus the photos on the extra refrigerator in the middle of the room.”

In the meantime, a neighbor complained to the city about the home’s overgrown yard, left unattended after a year of vacancy. The city warned the homeowner to clean up the yard, or else they’d send in a landscape crew to do it for him—at a cost nearly three times that of hiring a landscape company. They were given one weekend to clean it up, according to Provost. She scrambled, because no one was available for more than a week. A crew of teenagers were subsequently engaged to mow, weed-whack, and trim. They even found a koi pond under all the brush.

Once the listing hit, Provost received multiple offers within three days, but because the home was being sold as is, it wouldn’t qualify for all types of financing. Finding the right buyer required getting the right offer—ideally all cash.

“It listed for $250,000 but sold for $241,000 cash,” says Provost. “The seller felt most comfortable accepting the cash offer with no contingencies from a buyer who was also a local Realtor. We knew he would be able to navigate the hurdles without concern.”

Provost and her client’s challenges, however, were not quite at an end. Even with an accepted offer, probate was not yet complete and the attorney handling the estate had to resubmit paperwork. Top that off with solar panels on the home that must be transferred separately from the rest of the house.

“We could see there was solar, but we had no information on who the company was or anything about the purchase or lease program it was under,” says Provost.

Provost found the name of the company on the solar junction box on the side of the house while the seller had to dig through items he’d cleared from the home to locate the necessary documents. Then they had to send the previous owner’s death certificate to the solar company. This delayed the closing yet again.

Once the home cleared probate, the solar panels were transferred, and the yard was fully tamed, the deal finally closed on Aug. 28, 2023—four months after Provost started working on the property. “While that might seem like a long time, it would have been much longer had she not been experienced in navigating the unique challenges of selling inherited homes,” says Neumann.

Realtor, TBWS

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