Buying probate property

[Finallyhome]

Hi

My wife and I are looking for advice, we currently own our home and have put an offer on a property which has bee accepted. The property we have put the offer on is through probate. We have been advised that this could take some time to be processed. Approximately 6-10 weeks before probate is signed off.

The question we have is, when is the best time to put our house on the market and possibly accept an offer? Our current house is in a position to be advertised.

We have spoken to someone who advised to wait until probate been finalised and signed off etc, then to advertise our house on the market.
Is this correct?

Are there any issues with advertising our house and potentially accepting an offer on our property subject to us completing the purchase of our new house?

Thanks
R

One factor you might want to bear in mind is that apparently it's much easier to sell a house when there is some furniture in it than when it's empty, so assuming you are taking all or most of your stuff with you, it might be worth going to market soon, depending on how quickly property is selling in your area.

Do you have any idea how complex the probate situation is? I dealt with my mum's estate last year, which was very simple (one property plus savings, no IHT) and the grant came through in less than 3 weeks.

If you do sell the house and then find it is taking longer to sort out, you are still technically selling without an onward chain, which is attractive to a lot of buyers who may be prepared to wait a little.

If you do decide to wait, that has advantages in that you don't have to stress out about losing a buyer, but against that you might end up having the responsibility of an unoccupied property for an indefinite period of time.

In short - pros and cons to both approaches. I'm in a similar position myself - planning to move into an inherited property that is being renovated. I decided to put my house on the market sooner rather than later (with hopefully no more than 2-3 months left to wait) and now have a buyer. Yes, they may pull out if my project is delayed for longer, but I'm prepared to take that risk. Conveyancing can take quite a while in any case.

I am surprised that the vendors of the probate property have accepted your offer when you're not even on the market. Have you talked this through with them?

I would suggest you advertise now. It is a very slow market and it's taking 2-3 months for the average house to sell at the moment.

We lost a probate house we had an offer accepted on as we weren't in a position to proceed when the probate was granted (our buyer pulled out). They wouldn't give us time to sell they just put it back on the market and it sold immediately.

From experience, probate is currently taking approx 5 months, even for a simple estate (property, some cash, no IHT liability). But as PP’s say, market generally is slow, so I’d look at marketing sooner rather than later.

Yep, probate took 5 months from time of application in the property we were buying. Apparently a simple application.

I would get your own property on the market as soon as you can. We marketed my mum’s property not long after we had applied for probate. We had 3 offers the first weekend it was on the market. It was made clear by our estate agent that probate had been applied for and this was included on the sales particulars. We received probate (simple estate) after about 10 weeks. Conveyancing work has obviously started, solicitors appointed on both side, leasehold pack paid for by us etc.but no-one was rushing as we were awaiting probate. The thing is probate is a bit of an unknown in terms of timescales but our recent experience of a simple estate with no questions from the Probate Office, timescale was 10 weeks from application to receipt of the grant. This may not be everyone’s experience. The Probate Office allow themselves 16 weeks before you are even allowed to chase..