House Clearance Help & Advice: Putting your loved one's home up for sale

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If and when the time comes that your elderly parent has to move into a care or nursing home or they should pass away and no will has been made then the closest family member will be the administrator for the estate. This means that they will be held responsible for making sure all debts have been paid and the belongings of the deceased shared and the home sold if they owned property.

If the elderly person will be going into a care home and you are going to be claiming for help with the cost of the care home and get help then if they have their own property this will be counted as collateral after the parent has lived in the care home permanently for a period of 12 weeks or longer. However if a close relative of the elderly person is residing in the home then the home cannot be counted.

If you are going to put the home up for sale then first you will have to get a grant of probate or letter of administration in order to run the persons finances and make important decisions. A grant of probate is always needed is you wish to transfer deeds of a property or sell the property of a loved one.

Before you can get a grant of probate the first thing that has to be dealt with is the HMRC’s requirements. What this means is that you need to get a valuation of the estate at the time of death and this can take some considerable time to accomplish. A copy of the death certificate will be required along with other financial documents which can vary. One particular point to note is that if and when the home of the deceased is sold there could be capitol gains tax on the house if it has gained in value since the time of death and valuation.

There are many ways that you can sell the home of the deceased perhaps the easiest way is if any of the relatives wish to buy the property from you to keep it in the family. If you are putting it up for sale outside of the family then of course you are going to want to get the best possible price for the house. In order to do this you will have to have the house appraised and valued, it can be very costly selling your loved ones home and a good estate agent is essential if you are going to get the best possible price.

You can help matters by making sure everything is neat and trim such as the gardens, flowers and hedges and the walls have had a fresh coat of paint. You could also consider spending a little on decorating the inside of the home especially if the decorating was to the tastes of an elderly person, this will make it more appealing in the eyes of younger people who might be interested in purchasing it.

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