Selling Land that belonged to my deceased mother and brother

[Mike Jones]

Hi All,

I have some Land that is still in both my Mom's name and my older brothers that have both passed away.

I dont think the part of being on my moms name would be a problem since I did legally inherit it but my brothers kids dont want to pay the taxes on it or care about it and are willing to sign it away.

Question is, how would I go about selling it?

Thanks!

---Mike

[Rick H.]

Before you can sell it, you've got to own it first!

Since you don't indicate what State this land is in, we need to have that conversation. All State's inheritance laws differ. If this land is in CA, you must first understand how title is held. If held by your Mother and Brother as Joint Tenants, the last to die would have inherited the interest of the other.

So, (again, in CA) we'd have to determine who owned what, at what time, and probably determine the date of death value. If less than the threshold value, (probably $150,000) you may be able to acquire title via a summary probate. If much lower value, you might be able to avoid probate altogether and merely filing an affidavit of small estate. A good title insurance company will tell you what is needed in order to have marketable (insurable) title.

The other heirs (brother's children) can affirmatively provide you an irrevocable assignment of their interest(s) or decline to accept. The latter is cumbersome and problematic; better to get notarized assignments from ALL heirs.

Lastly, we haven't even began to talk about what this property would be worth to a buyer since we don't know if this is in the middle of downtown San Francisco or Fort Stinking Desert - adjacent.

Is your inherited real estate have any value to someone other than you? Is it build-able? Now, as to marketing and selling it, who would want it and what would they want it for? Answer that question and you'll mostly know if this exercise is worth the effort by an agent or for you to market it thru Craigslist or other media.