Interview with Jachele Pfeifle, REALTOR®
What happens when you are trying to sell an inherited home?
A couple of things need to happen when you inherit a house. The first thing that has to happen is if there is no will, it has to go through probate. This is a legal process where it is determined that the will is being honored, and that the house is available to sell, and that whoever it is left to has the right to sell that house. When you're taking and looking at the probate process, there's a couple of things that come into factor. Title has to take and be seen; we have to take and see primarily who owns the title. Say Mr. and Mrs. Smith were married for 40 years, but Mr. Smith is the only one that owned the home. Mrs. Smith was never on that house, then we have to make sure that there's nothing on title saying that Mrs. Smith had any rights to the home. We also have to make sure that there's nothing stating on a house that hasn't gone through probate, that somebody else doesn't have rights to that house. Going through probate is a legal process. It does have to happen if there is no will or no living will in process, and even if there are questions about the will, it has to go through probate.
Once it's through probate, then the courts or the probate officer will grant access to an entity to be able to sell that property, and that's where the estate sale comes in. At that point, the person that inherited the house has a couple of different options. A lot of times on an inherited house, you're looking at a house that maybe has been a little bit neglected, or a lot neglected. Just because the person that owned the house at the end didn't have the energy to keep it up the way that they used to, or the finances to keep it up with the way they used to, or they were just really comfortable in it and they didn't see any need to improve it, because there was no reason to replace the refrigerator that work just fine from 1974. When you're looking at an inherited house, you have to look at it a couple of different ways. Is this something you want to sell? Is this something you want to renovate? Is this something that you just want to walk away from, because the time and energy to put it up to standards, to pass inspection, to pass appraisal is just not worth your time. Those are all questions that are answered after you get through the probate, or the process of a living power of attorney, or a power of attorney, or you're the one that's granted the access in the will.
When you're taking and looking at an inherited house, there's a couple of different options that you need to do. The first is you do have to contact a lawyer. The second is you have to contact a CPA to find out what the financial obligations are. And the third is to contact a real estate agent that truly has worked with probate and inherited houses beforehand; because it's such a specific process and there's certain ways to leave title and take title, so that way you minimize any risk to yourself.
If someone has been established as the personal representative by the probate court and they are ready to go and sell a home. What are some of the first steps that they should take with you as the realtor once they've gotten through that step?
The first step that they should take is giving us a call. The reason that I feel we're better than everybody else is we have options for you. We're not going to take and tell you the easiest option, we're not going to give you just one option, because that might not be what's in your best interest. What is your best interest? Let's have a conversation. Is it your best interest to take and fix some stuff up to get the highest and best? Is it your best interest to have a clean close? Is it your best interest to just leave everything and close the book as quickly as possible? Here at Dream Property Team, we'll go into each house and evaluate that house for that specific house. We'll let you know I think this house is actually okay to go to market, or here's some stuff that you could do that would increase your value, or here's an investor and they're willing to purchase it exactly as-is, and this is the price. That way you have your options, you have your different price points in mind. You know how much work it's going to take or not take.
A lot of times when people inherit a house, they're not even in the same community any longer. You have the sister that lives in California, and the brother that lives in New York, and you're in Colorado, where great grandma was, and all of a sudden this becomes your entire responsibility. Where great grandma lived could have been an amazing place, but to sell it, it needs a lot of work. It needs a new roof, it needs sewer lines cleaned out, it needs a new bathroom, it needs a new kitchen, it needs new flooring; these items can add up really quickly. You hear on the radio all the time, fix and flip homes, it's easy. Unfortunately, that's a lie. A lot of people can get into a lot of trouble because they don't know what they're doing. Do you know how to put up tile? Do you know how to do flooring or are you going to have to hire somebody for that? If you have to hire all these different people, do you even know where to start hiring those people? That's where we really come in, is we can advise you, hey, here's what it's going to cost to fix it in our opinion, but here's some numbers to call because you're going to have to do the research to see if that's something that you want to invest in, or if it's something where it's just way too much time and energy.
Here's what we're going to give you. We can do a quick, easy, painless, close, but maybe it's not top dollar. Or if it is and the house is cleaned out, and everybody came and got what they wanted, and it’s a house that is in great condition, then we're going in and stage it. We're going to market it. We're going to sell that house for you. So that it can be somebody's next home. Just like it was great grandma's home where she had all those memories and people in. We'll bring it up to the standard to make it somebody's next home, and that's really important. It's important to have the knowledge and the education on which way to make a decision. Because the more knowledge and education we have about how the process goes, how long it's going to take, where are you going to turn when you're all of a sudden getting all these requests, it makes a difference on your agent.
As agents that have been through this process time and time again, we have those answers. We also have the solutions. If somebody calls up and we do list the house, and they do a sewer scope and the sewer is completely collapsed, we have the solutions to those. We can do A, B, and C. At the time of an estate sale typically you're so overwhelmed by so many other things that you need somebody that can lay it out in a map format. We're going to start here and we're going to end here. At Dream Property Teams, that's what we do. We start at one point, we end at the other point we have choices in between. Those choices are presented to you in a way that you truly understand what you're getting into, versus feeling like you've got tricked or that you didn't have any options, because you always have options. You have the options of what you can do or not do. You have options at the time that you want to put in or not put in. We don't take and dissuade you into doing something you don't want to do, because at the bottom of the day, it's in your best interest to do what's best for you, and it's in our best interests to do what's best for you, not what's best for us.
Dream Property Team is in Colorado Springs. Can someone from out-of-state call you and work with you to sell maybe their parents' home or their loved one's home that was in Colorado Springs, even if they're out-of-state?
Absolutely. We have it happen all the time. We will get calls saying mom passed away a year ago and we have to move dad in with us and we just don't know what to do. At that point we kind of take over the entire process, because it's a lot. We'll go into the house, we will video chat with you, we'll let you know what's in the house. We'll bring up points if we see points that are wrong. There was one house that I walked into, and mom had passed away many years ago, and they didn't realize that dad had as bad dementia as he had. No one had seen the house in a couple of years because they always flew dad out to them. When I went in the house, I found out that the refrigerator didn't work. I found out that the stove was actually being used as storage, and that there was a huge leak in one of the showers that went all the way downstairs and he had a bucket. The family, even though they were a super loving family, had no idea their father was living in these situations. At that point, with conversing with the entire family, we decided it was best to sell it to an investor.
Even though we have an investor, and we are investors here at Dream Property Team, we did our due diligence by reaching out to other investors to see where it was going to go, to see where this house could go because there were a lot of problems. We coordinated showing the properties to investors while maintaining the dignity of the family, and we really found them the best solution. At the end of the day, we actually sold it to a different investor versus selling it to ourselves because they've got the people the highest price, and that highest price for moving dad into that retirement home was a big deal. It was a big deal to have $20,000 more.
Here at Dream Property Teams, we're not about our pride, but we're about what's best for the client, because sometimes at the end of the day, that little bit of a difference can make all the difference. Maintaining the client's dignity, maintaining the client's trust, taking and presenting options, we really do. We think outside the box and we're willing to take and go in different directions to think outside that box. We're going to get roofers up there if we need to get roofers up there, we're going to get somebody to check the sewer lines if we're afraid there's going to be a plumbing problem. We're going to meet the people out there, climb up on the roof and see what the roofer is talking about, because if we don't know what somebody's talking about, how can we advocate for you and your family?
On the hunt for an investment property in Colorado Springs or the surrounding areas, contact Jachele Pfeifle of the Dream Property Team here.