Estate Sale

we have an offer in on an estate sale. there are other offers coming in, so we know we are going to have to wait a few days to hear back.

Can anyone share their experience with an estate sale?

From what I am hearing they can be tough. What should we expect? and anything that you should have done, that you learned afterwards?

Re: Estate Sale

Ours was originally not an estate sale... an old lady was going into a nursing home and they had to sell her house (quickly) to pay for it. But her husband is gone and he had no kids so her niece was handling everything with Power of Attorney.

Then, she passed away a week before our closing date! Fortunately the family wanted to honor our contract but they had to establish the estate first and relatives in Europe were named in the will and had to sign off on everything... it was a nightmare. Instead of closing Nov. 20th we closed March 3rd...

BUT, in your case the estate is already established and has decided to sell the house and an asking price at least. Hopefully there aren't a lot of people involved so fewer people can weigh in on the decisions that need to be made.

Also, the fewer people involved, the fewer ways they have to split up the proceeds from the sale, so they may not get as caught up in numbers.

Good luck!!

Message edited 8/27/2009 11:57:33 AM.

Re: Estate Sale

Our house was an estate sale. They had one open house and there were 12 offers on the house. We got the house. The house was being sold by the son. The house was empty for 2 years and the son lived out of state. My next door neighbor was the realtor that was handling the house. We really didnt have any issues with the sale. Everything went smoothly.

Re: Estate Sale

my one and only experience was that we were outbid. i am still sad about it.

we think the listing agent had a family member (or someone she knew) that wanted it and didn't "hear all offers" as she is supposed to.

we offered asking price.

Re: Estate Sale

It depends on the heirs. If there is only one or a couple it should go smoothly. It is when there are several people trying to agree to sell, it becomes tricky.

We bought from an estate sale. The executress was a nightmare to deal with. The father was worth millions, she was total trash and really a pain in the A $$ to deal with.


Good luck!!

Re: Estate Sale

We bought an estate house and it went fairly easy for us..there were 4 kids, but only one was responsible for the sale of the house so we just had to deal with him..it was right before last winter so they wanted to sell before the winter and deal with the expenses. the only hard part was that the son didnt know all the answers to our questions, ex what was that pipe in the back, but with a little investigating we got all our answers.

Re: Estate Sale

We bought an estate sale. We knew the son of the deceased and he had asked us if we wanted to take a look before they went to a realtor. We looked, we liked and negotiated a price. We went to our respective real estate attorneys and took it from there. Everything went very smoothly!

Re: Estate Sale

My first house was an estate sale, went very smoothly.

Re: Estate Sale

i have no experience with estate sales just wanting to wish you luck.

are you leaving FS and if so, why?

Re: Estate Sale

Re: Estate Sale

our house is an estate sale and its been HELLISH but what can i do. Ours was FSBO so its a bit different if your going through an agent then it should be easy as long as all the siblings (or heirs) are in agreement.