How to Find the Right Real Estate Agent for Probate Property

When a person passes away, it’s often left to family members to handle their final business affairs and determine the fate of their belongings. In most states, estates of a certain value that have not been placed into a living trust must go through the probate process.

Probate is the court-supervised legal procedure that ensures the proper people are given the rights to and responsibility for the decedent’s financial and physical assets. Many legal aspects of the probate process — such as filing the initial and closing petitions — will be handled by your probate attorney.

If the decedent’s estate includes property that you intend to sell during probate, you’ll also need a real estate agent with probate experience.

If I have a probate lawyer why do I need a probate real estate agent?

Even the simplest probate sale (that proceeds much like a traditional home sale) has nuances that need to be done according to your state’s probate laws.

You should use a real estate agent for any type of real estate transaction, but a probate property real estate agent requires some additional experience.

For example, a regular real estate agent may not know the correct probate procedure, or to use probate-specific forms when completing the sale. If either is incorrect at your final petition hearing, the probate judge will not close out probate. The need to make corrections can lead to rescheduling a new hearing weeks or months down the line.

If you don’t have a probate agent, you’ll need to rely on your attorney to check over the probate sale documentation to ensure it will be approved by the courts.

Attorney’s fees get expensive when they are spending hours doing the work a probate agent would do as part of their standard commission.

In some cases, especially if estate taxes are due, you may need to get a specialized appraisal to establish the date of death value of the property. A probate agent will know if this is needed in your case and have relationships with trusted estate appraisers.

Probate sales have a timeline that must be adhered to — especially if the sale requires court confirmation. This is a complex process in which the probate property is sold in court through an auction-like proceeding called the overbidding process.

Prior to the court confirmation hearing, you and your agent need to list the home and accept an offer. In many states, you are then required to relist the probate property at the accepted offer price for a period of 30-45 days.

A real estate agent with probate experience will know these probate-specific procedures, timelines, and deadlines that a regular agent won’t — preventing costly mistakes that could delay proceedings.