Selling my late mum’s house myself or through a solicitor?

[BubbleLily]

I’m in my twenties so would be grateful from advice from people who have more knowledge or experience of this than me.

We’ve already been granted probate on mum’s estate. We (or more specifically I - no other family) now need to sell her house. I can either do this through her solicitor, who is acting as executor, or have it transferred into my name to sell it myself.

The pros of getting the solicitor to sell it is that I live across the country. The downside is that I don’t trust mum’s choice of solicitor to do a good job at it. It took them nine months from her death to even APPLY for probate, on a simple estate.

The pros of selling it myself is that I could choose the pricing strategy etc to balance selling it quickly against getting a reasonable sum for it. The cons are being 250 miles away and also that it would take at least twelve to eighteen months for me to be able to put it on the market according to mum’s solicitor because that’s how long it’s taking the land registry to update ownership records. The solicitor has said they would write to the land registry on my behalf to say I’d need this expedited, but that there’s no guarantee this would be granted, and if it were, we have no way of knowing how much it would speed up the process by.

Thanks all - I agree, I definitely need independent legal advice. I will reach out and set this up.

Mum’s solicitors will be paid a percentage of her estate value, so no incentive for them to drag anything out. The land registry does have a huge backlog so I trust they were being honest. They did also say they’d write to the land registry to try and get it expedited but that they couldn’t make any promises.

Here's some answers to someone asking the same question.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17cVCUtSTQ/

And here's a screenshot from the land registry website

@BubbleLilywhy did it take the solicitor 9 months to apply for probate? How long did it then take? There is no way I’d want to use that sol to sell the house!

Thanks so much for looking into it further for me! I think this is the most relevant chart for land registry processing times.

I know - 9 months is outrageous. No answer or apologies given. The only half logical explanation is that mum lived in a remote and impoverished area where basically no services work, public or private, so they have a captive audience.

The Land Registry generally deal with expedited applications within 10 working days. Sometimes they insist on a sale being agreed before they agree to expedite (hence your solicitor not being able to guarantee the LR accepting the request I expect) but in my experience, they're willing to accept more expedition requests at the moment than they have done historically and I'd expect them to accept it in this case.

No, the executor's job hasn't finished. It will be finished when either the house is sold and the proceeds distributed or the house is transferred to OP.

Thank you, this is really helpful information. I’m leaning towards selling it myself and taking the risk that they’ll expedite it for me.

Definitely don't need to transfer first. As long as you can prove that house is coming to you so you have the right to sell after probate then that's all that's needed. We are about to do this with my FIL properties. One property is just being sold to provide funds for the estate, the other is passing to my husband but he doesn't want to keep it (money pit) so it's being sold. Lawyer and estate agent says no need to transfer title. Could you appoint a different solicitor for the sale?

If its transferred into your name you would no longer be a first time buyer in future if you wish to purchase a property. The stamp duty is a lot more on your second home

As has already been pointed out, the Land Registry is currently taking up to 18 months to process changes of ownership. If OP wants to sell the house herself, she would have to wait until the house was registered in her name.

Thank you! Am I right to assume that this was because the executor sold the properties?

I can’t appoint a different solicitor sadly as I’m not the executor. Mum appointed her solicitor as executor in her will.

Why on earth are Land Registry taking 18 months?? Why do we put up with such nonsense from a dept we fund.

You don’t need it to be registered to you. As long as you have been granted probate you can make plans to sell it.

Edited to say, just seen you aren’t the executor so different rules apply.

Is this the first time you've heard about these delays @PropertyD ? (And if so, where have you been??)

The solicitor is the executor, not OP

The reality isn't as pessimistic as that, as I've already posted. Two weeks for me, and the majority are done within a month according the the LR website.

@saraclara , are you currently practising?

No. I've just come out of almost the exact same process as OP and am relating my experience.

I was aware of the large backlog, but a request for expediting, resulted in the deeds in my hand in two weeks.

HM Land Registry: processing times - GOV.UK https://share.google/MBWpcUWAc0TsdHA8i

But this is the legal matters board where people come to ask questions and experienced legal professionals answer them.

Sorry for the loss of your mum. Suggest you get more advice, if it gets transferred into your name, you may no longer qualify as a first time buyer in a future purchase and be able to use any LISA account if you have one.

Solicitor might charge you a lot for handling the sale though. I’d get a quote. Then decide if waiting is worth the saving by you doing the sale. It would depend on money for me. If you own the house, if you then buy, I’m assuming you would not be classed as a first time buyer.

Unless the house appreciates, there won’t be CGT and it’s not a second house anyway. The main issues are delay vs cost. Plus maintenance!

can the solicitor resign from being executor now so you can proceed on your own?

is it too late now that probate has been granted?

IANAL!

Some banks and insurance firms (pension and life insurance) are ridiculously slow and the executors need a pretty accurate full picture of the deceased's finances before they can apply for probate.

In my Mum's case, two banks, the Halifax and the Post Office took over six months to even acknowledge the death certificate and another couple of months to provide figures for bank balances, so that was 8 months after first advising them of the death before we had figures to use on the probate application form!

(no surprise that both took another six months after we gave them the probate certificate for them to actually pay out the monies!! - I'll never use either the Halifax nor Post office again as they were utterly dismal and hopeless in dealing with the estate).

Could there not be an issue in the future if the OP buys her own house? I thought that there was reduced/zero stamp duty on someone's "first" home within limits etc. If the OP ends up owning her mother's old home, then when she wants to buy her own in the future, it won't be her "first" home and any stamp duty exemptions won't apply.