The House That Outlived Its Owners

The First Question Is on the Deed

Before anything else, find the deed. The house itself tells you which path you are on. If your parents put the home in a revocable living trust, the person named as successor trustee can sell the house directly, with no court, no referee, and no hearing. It moves like a normal sale, and the family keeps moving with it.

If the home is in your parent's name alone with no trust, probate runs the show. The estate goes through the superior court of the county where they lived. A house in Roseville goes through Placer County. One in El Dorado Hills goes through El Dorado County, which means the courthouse up in Placerville. A house in Sacramento goes through the court downtown on 9th Street. You do not need to memorize any of that, but your attorney and your agent should live in the same county, because the paperwork and the hearings happen there.

There is a third path worth checking early. California allows a transfer on death deed, a beneficiary deed that names who gets the house and lets it pass with no court at all. These are easy to miss in a stack of papers, so have your lawyer or agent pull the title record in the first week.

Probate Runs on the Court's Clock, Not Yours

Probate is not a punishment, it is a process, and the process has a speed limit. Someone files the petition, form DE-111, and the court sets a hearing, usually four to eight weeks out. The executor is officially appointed after that hearing, with letters that say so. Nothing about the house can be sold until the executor holds those letters.

In a clean case, the appointment lands about four to six weeks after the death. The whole estate, from filing to final distribution, usually runs nine to eighteen months. Simple estates can close in four to six. Messy ones, the ones with a dispute between siblings or a fight over an old creditor, run past two years.

That is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to price and prepare the house like you mean it, because the court does not care how ready you are to be done with this.

An Appraiser the Court Picks Sets the Floor

A probate sale has one extra step a normal sale does not. A court appointed appraiser, called the probate referee, values the house, and California law says the home cannot sell for less than 90 percent of that number. The referee's figure sets your floor, and your pricing has to respect it, or the court will not approve the deal.

The practical upshot: your agent should read the referee's number against the current market before anything goes up for sale. You do not want to discover a gap at the hearing, because nobody enjoys a second trip before the judge.

The referee is not the same as a buyer's home inspection, and it is not a regular market appraisal. It is its own thing, with its own schedule, and it is one more reason probate sales reward someone who has done them before.

Strangers Can Bid in the Courtroom

Here is the part that surprises most families. Depending on the authority the court gives the executor, a signed offer may have to go back to a confirmation hearing, where a judge reviews the deal out loud. And at that hearing, another buyer can stand up and top it. The first overbid has to beat your accepted price by at least 5 percent plus $500. From there the bidders can go back and forth, and the judge picks the better deal for the estate.

That sounds scarier than it plays. Sales confirm in this region every week. But it means an offer needs to be written right the first time, and it means you want an agent who has sat in these hearings, because the courtroom has its own manners.

If the executor holds what the law calls full authority, the sale skips the confirmation hearing entirely. The beneficiaries still get a 15-day notice, and the deal can close in about 45 to 60 days, like a normal escrow. Which authority your executor holds changes your whole timeline, so ask for it in writing early.

You Do Not Have to Sell Just to Pay Off the Bank

The second question families ask, usually in the same breath as "do we have to sell?", is whether the mortgage comes due. The short answer is no, not because of the inheritance. A federal law, the Garn-St Germain Act from 1982, stops the lender from calling the loan due when a home passes to family by inheritance. A spouse or a child can keep the mortgage exactly where it is and keep making the payments. The lender cannot force a refinance.

Two catches. The protection follows relatives, so if the house was left to someone outside the family, the lender can enforce the due-on-sale clause. And the law only covers the transfer itself. Stop making payments and the foreclosure clock starts like any other mortgage. Nobody inherits the right to skip a payment.

So the mortgage alone should not force the decision. Whether to keep the house or sell it is a family and money question, not a bank question, and it deserves a calm hour with a calculator before anyone calls a realtor.

Here Comes the Tax Surprise

Now the piece that catches nearly everyone, because very few people hear it in the days after the funeral. California taxes a home at its value, and it can reassess when the house changes hands. Your parents paid taxes on what the house was worth decades ago, often a number that looks like a rounding error today. Inherit the home, and the county assessor can reset the bill to full current market value.

Proposition 19 changed the old rules that used to hand children a free pass. Today a child keeps the parent's old tax bill only if three things all line up: the house was the parent's primary residence, the child moves in within one year and makes it their own primary home, and someone files the claim with the county, form BOE-19-P. Meet all three, and an exclusion cushion, about $1.04 million above the old assessed value for the current two-year window, keeps the bill low.

Miss any part, especially the moving-in requirement, and the home reassesses to full market value. That matters in this region, where a house in Roseville or Folsom bought in the 1970s for a price that looks small next to today's median can now be worth many times that. If the plan is to sell the house rather than move into it, the tax bill resets to today's value, full stop.

And if the idea was to rent the place out and keep the low bill, this law closes that door too. Prop 19 ended the old break for second homes and rentals passed down to children. Talk to a property tax expert before you assume anything, because this is the one mistake families discover in April.

Take Care of the House While the Estate Works

While the court does its slow, steady work, an empty house is a losing house. Do these early, even before you decide whether to sell.

The Part That Is Not in the Paperwork

The house is the last place your parents got to act like themselves. The garage that smells like Dad's sawdust. The kitchen where Mom made every birthday dinner. Probate will treat it like an asset, and you should not have to. I have walked with families who grieved in the living room of the house they were listing that same week, and the process can be gentle if the people running it are kind.

There is an old saying I lean on in deals like this: you know what you know, you know what you don't know, and you don't know what you don't know. Probate is full of that last bucket. My job is to carry the details, keep everyone informed, and let the family be a family while the paperwork moves.

If you are the one holding the questions, you do not have to solve them tonight, but you should solve them soon, because a house left to sit decides things on its own.