AIBU to not want to sell father's house?

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My father died this last year and left his house and everything ( his estate) equally to me and my two siblings. One of these siblings wants to clear and sell the house now, the other two don't want to. The sibling who wants to sell is the executor of the will. Does anyone have any experience of this kind of situation? How would we go about buying the third sibling out? is it a good idea? what else could be done?

OP - you need to find out exactly what your financial position is, to check whether it is viable for you to keep the house.

Ask your executor sibling whether there is any money coming to you, other than what's tied up in the house, and take it from there.

If there's a beach there, then it's perfectly possible that it could work as a holiday let - but you need to go into this with your eyes wide open, and not just rely on the emotional aspect of not being able to bear letting the house go. Do some research on owning a holiday rental house, make a through survey of the house and contents - and check out what you would need to do to make it into a viable holiday home. calculate your finances, and find out your other siblings take on it.

Good luck this afternoon.

OP realistically I think you will have to sell. If none of you live nearby, it will become a nightmare to look after as an empty property. It took over 3 yrs to sell my mum's house after she died and it became a massive burden to look after even though my sister lived 5 mins away. Every time I went in there it felt less and less like my mum's house and visiting became quite a sad experience, no loving welcome any more.

Keeping it as a holiday home will be similarly difficult and if you rent it out, then it won't be yours in spirit any longer. As a B & B you would presumably have to hire a manager. Then that becomes a business not a home.

It will be very upsetting for all of you to leave the house behind, but I'm afraid that is one of the burdens bereavement brings. Nobody expects you to "just move on", but you cannot expect your executor sibling to sit on their hands for months when they really do have to make progress on
settling the estate.

I hope the meeting today moves things forwards and that the raw feelings of all of you do not prevent a resolution.

When I was clearing and arranging to sell my Dads house my neighbour told me they had been given a week to clear his mums (council) house. I envied him.
It took me ages to clear and in that time I had to pay council tax after one month, insurance (about 35 per month), utilities. I went one day and couldn't flush the loo. Had to arrange from a distance for a plumber to attend. Similarly had a problem with the boiler. Had a gardener go in every month. Had a neighbour go in every night to switch lights on.
This was not my childhood home but it was terribly hard. Your executor sibling will be dealing with all of this as well as their own grief.
Op it just doesn't sound possible to keep the house. It is only a thing, it represents some lovely memories but it isn't your memories. They are in your heart and soul and you can take them with you wherever you go and whatever happens to the house.

Oh, had a problem with the drains as well.

You have to pay council tax on an empty property. Bear that in mind. (at least in our borough)

If the father died six months ago, I would hope that the OP and her sibling would have been told about any money well before this. Just because the elder sibling is the executor, it doesn't mean she can keep information like that to herself.

Their father, I mean, sorry.

OP as I mentioned upthread I was the grandchild in your situation. I loved my nan's house, I spent at least 3 months a year in that house as a child, when I lived with my nan during the holidays. It was my second home, and was actually a warmer more special place than my first home.
BUT without her in it it became bricks and mortar. I loved that house because of the love and warmth I felt in it. I haven't been back inside it since the day I watched her die in it, and heard her last breath from outside the bedroom door.
What do you want your children to have in that house? They cannot experience your childhood, that was yours, and your parents made it. You can make theirs, and the location is irrelevant. The people and activities matter.

I hope the meeting is useful. In laws had to sell up their inherited in the family for generations home. Too far away for weekends etc. etc.

You need to sit down with sibling 2 and draw up a business plan. Work out how you are going to fund the purchase of 1/3 house, then what you are going to do with it afterwards .

Let it out ? Run as a holiday home ? Live in it yourselves ? Then get financial and legal advice .

Think everything through. Will you let it out through an agent ? What's the market rent ? How much are agents fees, insurances ? Who will deal with all the paperwork ? What if one of you wants to sell it in a few years and the other one doesn't ?

How will the holiday home or B and B work ? Are you both going to live in it and run a B and B ? Really ??? Have you investigated the feasibility of using it as a holiday home ?

I'm afraid you need to get your big girl pants on now and start addresses all these issues . After 6 months you really need to take your head out the sand - it sounds as if you have been leaving everything to sibling 1 while saying "It's too soon " or " you are all so harsh " .

If it's by a beach and in a tourist type area there's no harm in contacting some holiday cottage companies and getting them round. Get an idea of how much per week you'd get and likely occupancy rates....also of what work would need doing to possibly modernise it. Cost new furniture if needed, price up insurance, price up the cost of whatever tax you'd pay and the cost of a cleaning lady every Saturday.

Do the sums and sell it to your sibling like a dragons den pitch/business plan. Stress the positives of an asset which provides an income, would be useful for retirement, etc.

But also stress if they don't want to it and want the lump sum from a sale then that's ok.

If your other sibling is interested in the holiday cottage idea you might be able to get a mortgage between you for the money you need.

Personally I found looking after my mums house hugely stressful, I am the executor and didn't know what I wanted to do with it so it sat empty for two years but I was paying insurance, utilities etc out of my own pocket. It was also a 6 hour round trip to get there and when fencing panels blew down and the neighbours complained I had to go up and sort it (quite rightly). My 3 siblings showed no interest at all, never helped etc. In the end I obtained probate and put it on the market. The money from the sale was paid to the four of us this week. I think the issue here could be "letting it go"....it was hugely emotional clearing it out etc. Is your sibling who wants to sell the one looking after the house re bills and upkeep, this could be the reason they want to move forward as it is very time consuming and expensive, it's like running two homes, has probate been granted?

I do know someone who kept a beautiful old house in Cornwall just as a holiday home for family and friends. But they were very rich and could afford the ongoing costs. They had also cleared it of their parents things, so it was minimal in contents, more like a holiday home.

I've just skimmed back through this.

Do try other routes to get bereavement counselling OP you sound very fixated on the house and beach etc. Separating things out in your mind would help you.

How utterly heartless some pps are. Please stop reading this thread, OP. Take care of yourself

I'm sorry for both of your losses

I'm going to echo many other posters' comments regarding insurances and the practicalities of keeping a second home so far away from where you live.

You can get cover for holiday homes which is more expensive than standard home cover but not horrendously so. However, you'll find that this cost will increase again if you start renting it out to guests. There are, as has already been explained, various conditions which must be complied with in order for cover to engage; keeping heating on during winter, checking the property on a regular basis (and recording this), minimum security requirements, etc. Don't think this is something you'll be able to get away with not doing, or skipping the odd visit because you've got something on. Renting it out also means organising annual gas and PAT testing, plus other maintainence in addition to whatever initial work is required to bring it up to a rentable state. Realistically you'll need to have an letting agent, which obviously incurs more cost and reduces whatever profit you make from your tenant or guest.

As for the B&B idea, if you have no experience of this sector I would drop this plan like a hot potato. Honestly it's really, really hard graft for very little return. You'll stop seeing the house as your family home and it'll become a millstone around your neck very quickly.

You'll also have to think about how you'll devide time at the property with the other sibling equitably; with two families, two sets of friends (and teenagers, in time!) who will all want to have weekends and breaks up there, when are you going to have time for paying guests? Are you happy that the dates when you'll be wanting to use it (school hols, bank holidays), will also be the times when it'll be most marketable to guests? Have you discussed how you might pay for repairs or maintenance between you?

Please be kind to your sibling; if they were POA before your dad's passing and have now been landed with being the executor (quite an onerous and time consuming task) then maybe they just want to draw a line under that part of their life and look to the future. And that's ok too.

I think that based on the fact that you're worried how to fund essentially 1/6th if the property (with your sibling funding the other 1/6th), then that fact plus the mantainence, fees, repairs and other associated costs just means that this isn't the time for you to be keeping a foothold in this area. But it doesn't mean that you can never go back; you could use your part of the house money to fund a static caravan, or invest it and look to moving there permanently during your retirement.

If you force sale-wanter to court it will end in a sale. S/he is entitled to one third of the value of the estate and if you and the other sale-stopper can't raise that in cash there will have to be a sale. The costs will come out of the sale-stoppers' shares.

You don't want litigation in the family; so face up to necessity and join in the sale. Get it over with.

I know that that is not what you wanted to hear, but lawyers doing personal client work often have to be the bearers of bad news.

if it was sold it would be severing mine, my siblings and their children's connection to the place I grew up

I'm very sorry about your recent losses, but while I understand your attachment to the property, don't you think it's meaning could eventually become tainted by all the potential problems? As so many have said the costs involved in maintaining an empty house are very high, and the regulations around renting/running a B&B are massively complicated and make no allowances whatsoever for sentiment

Another thing to remember is that if you did buy out the executor, all these costs would fall on just the other two; you obviously couldn't expect them to go on sharing the cost, or even to help with the legalities, etc

Personally I believe that keeping it in the longer term could set you all up for quite a bit of unpleasantness - surely not something your lovely dad would have wanted?

How about proposing a deadline by which you will either put a buy-out offer on the table or agree to a sale?

I think this is a very good idea, try your best to buy out the other sibling but accept that if you can't you will have to sell. If you do have to sell and you and the other sibling really think you need a bricks and mortar connection with the place you grew up use your shares of the estate to buy a small easy to maintain holiday home there.

Whatever you do don't let this ruin you relationship with your siblings, I'm sure that would have been the last think your parents would want and no house is worth that.

Did you see your siblings op? How did it go?

Crikey, some of you are total gits!

Meeting went well. Two month deadline agreed to put research scenarios on table and decide how to go forward.

Thank you to the majority of you who really helped this afternoon.

Me and my big girl pants are off to drink wine with my siblings now while we try and sort thru wardrobes.

I think you are being a bit rude there, op.

That's really great that you've all agreed to consider realistic options

I'm sorry for your loss OP. Sometimes hanging on is good, sometimes it's not. Every person and every situation is different.

If your sibling wants to sell and you really don't then I'd get the house-valued (get 3x values because different EA value differently) and on that value I would offer to buy them out. They may or may not accept if they think they can get more money.

OP sorry for your loss.

I don't know where this house is or what it looks like: but I can think of unique houses in stunning locations I've spent time in and thought that if that was in my family I would do everything in my power to keep it in the family. I think such a place would by its virtue be somewhere others would want to stay In for holidays; and I can't see why this would take away from the value to your immediate family when they stayed there: after all plenty of people jointly own holiday homes and also rent them out through agencies. Perhaps you and your family can be happy to see the house moved on, and the gradual overlaying of new memories will put your loss into perspective over time, whilst also feel like you are staying in touch with lots of versions of the past. I doubt you are the sort of person who wouldn't decorate, freshen up, move the house forward?

I totally get what you are hankering for, it's not sentimentality, its feeling of place and an anchor.

If you can make it work why not, it's brilliant you can go away and think of different plans to go forward.

It's not for nothing that this precise situation is a common theme in literature through centuries - read The Cherry Orchard.

If it's a 1960s suburban semi then I don't think it's worth the agony - but I have a romantic feeling it's not?

Best of luck to find a way.