Sell an Inherited House in Florida

Start with how the house passed to you

Pull up the most recent recorded deed. Florida county clerks keep official records you can search online, and the wording on that deed tells you which of these applies:

• In the owner's name alone: someone needs authority from a court before a deed can be signed, so some form of probate is almost always needed, with or without a will.
• A Lady Bird deed, also called an enhanced life estate deed: the people named as remainder beneficiaries usually take the house at death without probate.
• Deeded to a revocable living trust: the successor trustee usually sells under the trust's terms, without probate.
• Married owners holding as tenants by the entirety, or co-owners with an express right of survivorship: the survivor owns the house, and the death is usually documented by recording a death certificate.
• Two or more owners with no survivorship wording: Florida treats them as tenants in common, so the deceased owner's share goes through their estate while the others keep their own shares.
• The owner's Florida homestead: the state constitution can decide who inherits regardless of what the will says, as explained below.

When more than one applies

A house can sit in a trust and still be homestead, and a Lady Bird deed can name the children while a spouse survives. Sort that out first, because it settles who signs the contract, who signs the deed, and whether the closing follows a title search or a court calendar.

Lady Bird deeds and trusts: often no probate, with one Florida catch

With a Lady Bird deed, the owner keeps full control for life, including the right to sell or lease without the beneficiaries' consent. Whatever has not been sold passes to the named remainder beneficiaries at death, and they sign the deed when the house is sold. The closing agent will usually want a certified death certificate recorded, and it will check that the owner did not revoke the deed or convey the house before dying.

With a revocable trust, the successor trustee named in the trust signs the deed. Expect the closing agent to ask for proof of the trustee's authority along with the death certificate.

The catch is homestead. Because the owner kept the power to revoke, Florida does not treat a Lady Bird deed or a revocable trust as a completed lifetime transfer of a homestead, and the constitutional limits on leaving a homestead can still apply. If the owner was survived by a spouse or a minor child and the deed or trust gave the house to someone else, have a Florida probate attorney confirm who actually owns it before anyone signs a contract.

Both arrangements usually help at tax time. A house in a revocable trust, or one where the owner kept a life estate, is generally counted in the owner's estate for federal tax purposes. For nearly every family that means no estate tax is owed, but it does give you a stepped-up basis, covered in the tax section below.

Homestead can override the will

Florida's constitution says a homestead cannot be left by will if the owner is survived by a spouse or a minor child, except to the spouse when there is no minor child. Where the owner left neither a spouse nor a minor child, the homestead can be left to anyone, and without a will it passes like the rest of the owner's property.

Where the restriction applies, the house was not validly left to the spouse, and there are descendants, Florida law gives the surviving spouse a life estate with the remainder going to the descendants. The spouse can instead elect to take a one-half interest as a tenant in common, with the descendants sharing the other half. That election must be made within 6 months of the death, and once made it cannot be undone.

Either way, the house now has several owners. Selling it normally takes the signature of the surviving spouse and every remainder beneficiary, and Florida divides the carrying costs between the life tenant and the remaindermen under its principal and income law instead of leaving them to whoever happens to pay.

Protected homestead also sits outside the property the personal representative controls, and it generally passes to the heirs free of the owner's unsecured creditors. A house the owner held as tenants by the entirety or with a right of survivorship is not protected homestead under the probate code, because it already belongs to the survivor. Title insurers commonly ask for a court order determining homestead status before they insure a sale.

Does the house need probate, and which kind?

If the house was in the owner's name alone and no Lady Bird deed, trust, or survivorship wording moved it, yes. Florida's procedure for settling an estate with no administration at all covers only certain personal property, never a house. The case is filed in the county where the owner lived. If the owner lived in another state, a separate Florida case, called ancillary administration, is opened in a county where the property sits.

Summary administration is the shorter route. Since July 1, 2026, it is available when the estate subject to administration in Florida, less property exempt from creditors' claims, does not exceed $150,000, up from $75,000 before that date, or when the owner has been dead for more than 2 years. A will that directs formal administration rules it out. No personal representative is appointed: the court enters an order assigning the property to the people entitled to it, and they sign the deed. Because protected homestead is exempt from creditors, its value is generally left out of that limit, which can bring an estate built around the family home within reach. Ask your attorney which threshold applies if a petition was filed before the change.

Summary administration has a trade-off heirs should understand. Before the order is entered, the person petitioning must search for creditors and provide for paying them. Afterward, everyone who received property stays personally liable for a share of valid claims, up to the value each received, until 2 years after the death. Someone who buys the house from those heirs in good faith, by contrast, takes it free of the decedent's creditors' claims.

Formal administration covers everything else. The court appoints a personal representative, a notice to creditors is published, and most claims are barred unless filed within 3 months of the first publication or, for a creditor who had to be served, 30 days after service, whichever is later. Separately, Florida cuts off most claims against a decedent 2 years after the death, although that cutoff never affects a recorded mortgage. How the personal representative gets authority to sell, and who signs at closing, is set out on our Florida probate property page.

Selling before probate is finished

This question comes up more than any other, and the answer has two parts. You can agree on a price and sign a contract while the case is being opened or is still running. The closing, when the deed is signed and the money changes hands, has to wait until someone can sign: the heirs named in an order of summary administration, the remainder beneficiaries under a Lady Bird deed, the successor trustee, or a personal representative with power to sell.

For a house that passed outside probate, there may be no court case at all, and the timeline is simply the title search. In summary administration, it is the date of the court's order. In formal administration, the personal representative's letters come first, and where the will grants no power of sale, the court must authorize or confirm the sale before title can pass. We buy from heirs and personal representatives at any of these stages, before or after probate finishes, and set the closing for when the authority to sign is in place.

Siblings and co-heirs: agreeing, buying out, or forcing a sale

When a house passes to several people, each usually owns an undivided share as a tenant in common. Nobody owns a particular room, and selling the whole house normally takes every owner's signature. Any heir can sell or give their share to another, and a buyout among siblings is the simplest answer when one wants the house and the others want the money.

If the owners cannot agree, any one of them can ask a Florida court to partition the property under Chapter 64. A house cannot be cut into pieces, so where dividing it would prejudice the owners, the court can order a sale at public auction and split the money by ownership share. Every party pays a share of the costs, including attorneys' fees that benefited the partition, and those can be taken from the sale money.

Inherited houses often get extra protection. In partition cases filed since July 1, 2020, Florida's Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act applies when the co-owners have no written agreement about partition, at least one of them got title from a relative, and relatives hold 20 percent or more of the interests or make up 20 percent or more of the owners. The court then orders an appraisal, and owners who did not ask for a sale get 45 days after notice to elect to buy out the ones who did, at their share of that value. If nobody buys and the house cannot be divided fairly, the default is an open-market sale at no less than the court's value rather than a courthouse auction.

Partition works, but it takes time and the legal fees come out of everyone's share. Most families get further by putting one written offer in front of every heir, so nobody is arguing over different numbers. Our inherited property sale calculator shows each heir's share after the mortgage, liens, and months of carrying costs.

An inherited house with a mortgage

The loan does not disappear, but the lender usually cannot call it due just because the owner died. The federal Garn–St Germain Act bars enforcing a due-on-sale clause on a home of fewer than five units when it passes to a relative because of the borrower's death, when the borrower's spouse or children become owners, or when it passes on the death of a joint tenant or tenant by the entirety.

That protection does not pause the payments. Keep them current while you decide, because missed payments can still lead to foreclosure. Federal servicing rules require the servicer, once it learns of the death, to promptly communicate with anyone who may have inherited the house. Once the servicer confirms your identity and ownership, you are treated as a borrower under those rules.

If you plan to sell, ask the servicer for a payoff statement early. The closing pays off the loan out of the sale price, so nobody has to clear it beforehand, and any equity left over goes to the estate or the heirs.

An inherited house with a reverse mortgage

A reverse mortgage insured by FHA, called a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage or HECM, becomes due and payable when the last surviving borrower dies, and no more money can be drawn from it.

HUD's guidance for heirs says the loan is to be satisfied within 30 days of the death, and that the lender may approve 90-day extensions when you show you are actively trying to sell or repay. The CFPB says the total time may stretch to six months. Property taxes and insurance remain the estate's responsibility until title is transferred, so do not let either lapse while you work it out.

If the house is worth more than the balance, you sell, pay off the loan, and keep the difference. If it is worth less, HUD lets the estate or heirs satisfy the loan by selling for at least 95 percent of the current appraised value, with the lender accepting the net proceeds, and the CFPB explains that the mortgage insurance the borrower paid for covers the shortfall. To keep the house instead, the full balance has to be repaid. A surviving spouse who was not a borrower has separate protections but must give the lender a certification within 30 days of the death.

Taxes when you sell an inherited house in Florida

Federal capital gains tax is measured from your basis, and for inherited property the basis is generally the fair market value on the date of death, not what the owner paid decades ago. The personal representative can choose an alternate valuation date instead. Any gain is treated as long-term no matter how briefly you held the house, so a sale soon after the death often produces little or no taxable gain. A date-of-death appraisal is the simplest way to document your basis.

The step-up follows ownership. When parents held the house as tenants by the entirety, only half of it was counted at the first death. When the house later passes from the surviving parent to you, its full value at that second death generally sets your basis.

Florida adds little on top. The state constitution bars a state income tax on individuals and any inheritance tax beyond federal credits, and the Florida Department of Revenue confirms there is no Florida estate tax for deaths after December 31, 2004. Federal estate tax reaches only very large estates: for deaths in 2026, a federal estate tax return is required only when the gross estate plus certain lifetime gifts exceeds $15,000,000.

The tax you will actually see at closing is Florida's documentary stamp tax on the deed: 70 cents per $100 of the price, or $1,750 on a $250,000 sale, with a 60-cent rate on single-family homes in Miami-Dade. Every party to the deed is liable for it under Florida law, and the contract decides who pays. Our article on Florida seller closing costs covers the rest. Confirm your own position with a CPA before you sell.

Property taxes reset after the owner dies

Save Our Homes held down the owner's assessed value for years. A transfer at death is a change of ownership, and the house is reassessed at full just value as of the January 1 that follows. The exceptions are narrow: a transfer to a surviving spouse, a transfer by operation of law to the spouse or minor children under the homestead descent statute, and a transfer to a dependent who lives there as a permanent resident.

For a family inheriting a house the owner held for decades, the next bill can be far higher than the last one. If you or another heir moves in and makes it your permanent home, you can apply for your own homestead exemption, but the assessment still starts over from current value. Build the higher bill into any month-by-month plan, and see our Florida property tax guide for what happens when taxes go unpaid.

Insurance and the empty house

Call the insurer as soon as you can to report the death and ask two questions: who the policy now protects, and what its vacancy or unoccupancy clause says. Many homeowner's policies cut back coverage once a house has stood empty for a set period, and an inherited house is often empty for months. If the existing policy will not cover a vacant house, ask about a vacant-dwelling policy.

In Florida the risks are specific: hurricane season, a supply line that fails with nobody home, and humidity that becomes mold if the power and air conditioning are switched off. Keep the utilities on, leave the air conditioning running, and have someone check the house every week or two. Our Florida home insurance guide explains why an uninsured house is also hard to sell to a buyer who needs a loan.

The belongings and the condition of the house

Until it is distributed, what is inside belongs to the estate, and some of it may already be spoken for. Florida gives a surviving spouse, or the children if there is no spouse, the right to claim the household furniture, furnishings, and appliances in the owner's home up to $20,000 in net value, plus up to two vehicles, as exempt property, provided they petition for it in time. Photograph every room and agree as a family before anything is given away or hauled off. Our guide to belongings left in a house walks through the sorting.

The house itself is usually exactly as the owner left it: an older roof, original plumbing or wiring, years of deferred maintenance, and sometimes code violations or open permits that a title search turns up. You do not need to fix any of it to sell to us. We buy houses, condos, land, and mobile or manufactured homes as-is, and the family can keep whatever it wants and leave everything else behind.

Keep it, rent it, list it, or sell it for cash

Once you know who can sign, there are four realistic choices, and the right one depends on the house, the heirs, and how long the estate can carry it.

• Keep it: you take on the mortgage, the reassessed property taxes, insurance, and upkeep, and if there are co-heirs you will usually need to buy out their shares.
• Rent it: rent can cover the bills, but you become a Florida landlord, and the house usually has to be made rentable and insurable first. If you later sell with a tenant in place, the lease goes with the house, as our tenant-occupied sale guide explains.
• List it: a house in good condition may bring the highest price on the open market, but it usually has to be emptied, cleaned, repaired enough to pass a buyer's inspection and insurance, and carried until it sells. Our cash offer versus listing guide sets out the costs either way.
• Sell it to us for cash: we buy as-is, with no cleaning out, no repairs, and no commissions, and you choose the closing date. We can close in as little as 10 days when the title is clear, and we have been buying as-is property for more than 10 years.

What to gather before you call us

Send whatever you already have. We can make an offer with gaps in this list, but the more you have, the sooner we can tell whether the closing can follow a title search or has to wait for the court.

• Certified copies of the death certificate
• The most recent recorded deed, and any Lady Bird deed or trust document
• The will, if there is one, and the probate case number and county if a case has been opened
• The order of summary administration or the letters of administration, once issued
• Names and contact details for every heir or beneficiary, and whether a spouse or minor child survived
• Mortgage or reverse mortgage statements, and any letter from the servicer since the death
• The latest property tax bill and the homeowner's insurance policy
• Association contact details if the house is in an HOA or condominium

Wherever the house is in Florida

We buy inherited houses anywhere in Florida, including Central Florida towns across Lake, Volusia, Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Polk, and Brevard counties. The local details change from county to county, such as the clerk who holds the probate file, the property appraiser who handles the exemption, and the association if there is one, but the steps on this page apply statewide.

This page explains how Florida law generally works and is not legal or tax advice. For your family's facts, talk to a Florida probate attorney and a CPA.

Frequently asked questions

This page is general information about selling property in Florida, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Laws change and every situation is different, so talk with a qualified Florida professional about yours.