Selling an Inherited House in Florida

Florida generally runs estates through one of two processes, and the difference is measured in months. Formal administration is the full version: a personal representative is appointed, letters of administration are issued, creditors are notified, and the estate is settled under the court's supervision. Summary administration is the shorter route, generally available for smaller estates and for deaths more than two years in the past, subject to a statutory value threshold that has been amended before and could be again. Which track applies is the first question to put to a Florida probate attorney, because two families with similar-looking facts can end up on very different schedules.

Florida also generally requires a personal representative to be represented by an attorney unless that representative is the sole interested person, which surprises heirs who assumed they could file the paperwork themselves. And if the person who died lived in another state but owned Florida real estate — the common snowbird case — Florida generally requires an additional proceeding here for the property, on top of whatever is happening in their home state. Confirm what your estate needs before promising a buyer a closing date.

The creditor notice period is what most often moves a date that felt settled. Estates in formal administration generally publish a notice to creditors, after which claims are barred once a period running from that publication has passed, with a longer outer limit measured from the date of death. Title companies pay attention to where that period stands, so ask the estate's attorney when yours ends and plan around it.

Homestead in Florida is constitutional rather than merely statutory, and the single word covers three separate rules that families constantly conflate. One caps how fast the taxable assessment can rise. One shields the home from most creditors. One restricts who the owner was permitted to leave it to.

The creditor protection is genuinely powerful: where homestead applies, the property generally passes to the people entitled to it without being reachable by most of the estate's creditors. The catch is procedural. Title companies typically want a court order determining that the property was homestead before they will insure a sale, and obtaining that order is a step with its own timeline that heirs frequently do not know is coming. Raise it with the estate's attorney and the title company in the first week rather than the last.

The restriction on who the property could be left to is the rule that overrides documents. If the owner was survived by a spouse or a minor child, Florida limits how the homestead could be devised, and a will that ignores those limits does not simply take effect as written. Only a Florida probate attorney reading the actual documents can tell you whether it applies to your family — but if there is a surviving spouse or a minor child anywhere in the picture, ask before anyone makes plans about the house.

Florida's Save Our Homes provision caps how much the assessed value of a homesteaded property can rise each year. On a house a parent owned for twenty or thirty years, that cap has usually opened a wide gap between the assessed value and what the property is actually worth, so the tax bill the family is used to seeing reflects the capped number, not the real one.

That cap does not follow the property to an heir who does not qualify for homestead on it. As a general rule the change in ownership causes a reassessment at just value on the January 1 following the transfer, and the exemption comes off as well. The practical effect is a tax bill that can multiply, on a house nobody is living in. Look up the current assessed value and exemptions on the county property appraiser's site, then confirm how the reassessment applies to your situation with a tax professional.

On the federal side the familiar rule still holds: inherited property generally receives a stepped-up basis to its value at the date of death, so selling soon after inheriting often produces little or no capital gain. Florida adds no state estate or inheritance tax on top of that. Both points are general, and both should be confirmed with a tax professional before you rely on them.

Insurance is the Florida cost that surprises out-of-state heirs most, and it does more than raise the carrying number. Coverage across much of the state carries a separate hurricane or windstorm deductible calculated as a percentage of the insured value rather than a flat dollar figure, premiums have moved sharply in recent years, and carriers watch the age and condition of the roof.

That last point is what shapes the sale. A house with an aging roof can be difficult or expensive to insure, and a retail buyer who cannot obtain a policy generally cannot obtain a mortgage — which removes much of the buyer pool before anyone has discussed price. Cash buyers are not bound by that constraint, which is part of why they are often the realistic market for an older inherited Florida house rather than merely the fast one.

Meanwhile the estate's own coverage is at risk. Most policies limit or exclude coverage once a property has been vacant beyond a stated period, and an empty Florida house is exposed to weather and water intrusion in ways an occupied one is not. Call the carrier, say plainly that the house is unoccupied, and get in writing what is covered and for how long.

A large share of inherited Florida property is condominium, and the obligations attached to older condo buildings changed substantially after 2022. Florida now requires milestone structural inspections for many buildings past a certain age and height, and requires associations to fund reserves based on a structural integrity reserve study rather than voting to waive them. The thresholds and deadlines have been amended more than once since, so verify the current requirement for the particular building rather than relying on any general description, including this one.

For an heir the consequence is concrete. A building that has completed its inspection and funded its reserves is a straightforward sale. A building with a pending assessment, an overdue or failed inspection, or a reserve study nobody has acted on carries a liability that lands on whoever owns the unit, and buyers know it. Request the association's estoppel letter, the most recent financials and reserve study, and the last year of board minutes before pricing anything — the minutes are usually where an assessment nobody has voted on yet first becomes visible.

None of this makes a unit unsellable. It makes it a property that specific buyers underwrite routinely and general buyers avoid.

The law is statewide but the process is local. Probate is filed and heard county by county, so each county has its own clerk's probate division, its own judicial circuit with its own local procedures, and its own property appraiser — and heirs usually deal with more than one. The county pages below carry those specifics for South Florida.