Hey Berks County, April Crossley here with Berks County House Buyers, answering more of your questions today. I have owned Berks County House Buyers for a long time now. We’ve been buying houses in Berks County since 2004, and we continue to buy them today. We are a cash home-buying company located here in Berks County, and we live locally in the West Lawn area.
Today’s question that I received from a seller is, “How do I sell part of a property that I inherited with my siblings in Berks County?” So say someone passes away and whoever lived in the house leaves the house to three different siblings. Now, when I talk about this topic, know that this actually happened in my family and this was the way that we worked it out. Okay.
So you have a couple options. In one situation in my family, the home was in Morgantown, in Berks County. It was left to all three siblings and all three siblings wanted to sell. Two lived out of State and one lives about 45 minutes away, but didn’t want to keep the house, so they were all in agreement. They wanted to sell the house in Berks County.
This is ideal because it obviously makes it a lot easier. What they did was they went in and they had to clean out the house. They brought an auctioneer in, they auctioned out the contents. It took a lot of time. Then they put the house on the market with a real estate agent. That real estate agent marketed it, and then probably eight weeks later, they went to closing and resold the house to someone else.
They get a check at settlement and there was an attorney facilitating this entire process, the estate attorney. So in Berks County, in Pennsylvania, you need to file probate and be working with an estate attorney to sell the house. So they can also help you walk you through this process. So the proceeds from the sale of the house were divided equally amongst the three children that the house was left to.
In another situation on the other side of my family, there was a house in West Lawn in Berks County, Pennsylvania that was left to three siblings. One lived out of State, two, lived in State. The one out of State and the one that was in State didn’t want the house, but one of the siblings wanted to stay living in the house. So how do the other two siblings get their money from the house in Berks County if they’re not all in agreement that they need to sell the house?
So this is what they did. They had an appraiser come out and give an appraisal on what the house was worth. And then the person that wanted to keep the house had to qualify with a mortgage company to get a loan on the property. So they qualified to get a loan and that loan that they got paid out the two other siblings on the house. So he just kept the remaining… what was remaining for him, but was able to utilize that loan to pay out the other two siblings their portion.
So they took the appraised value of the home in Berks County, divided it by three, he stayed in the house and the other two siblings got paid out. So if you have a home in Berks County that’s an inherited property, it can be very overwhelming to take care of. We come across a lot of different situations and here’s what we tell people.
If your family really pulls together and they have the time to clean out the house, fix up the house, wait for the house to sell in the market, so they’re in no rush and they have time, then your best option is to clean it out, start going through the contents, let family come through and take whatever they want, clean the house, make necessary repairs, make sure railings are in place, the roof is good, the heater’s good, and then put the home on the market with a real estate agent.
That’s always where you will get the most amount of money for a home in Berks County, is on the market with a real estate agent. A lot of times when we are buying a house cash in Berks County, that’s an inherited property, what we see with inherited properties is families have their own families that they are involved with obviously, that take a lot of time. They have their own children that they’re running here and there. They have their own jobs that they’re working every day. So when a house is left to them and they’ve inherited a house in Berks County, a lot of times they just don’t have the time. They’re exhausted or the family is at odds, so they want the quickest solution.
They’re like, “We don’t have time to deal with this. We don’t want to clean out the house and fix up the house. This is overwhelming. We just want it gone.” That’s typically a situation where someone will call us to buy the house cash in Berks County. Then we come in and we buy the home as is for cash, and by as is, I mean we walk through, we give you two options for selling, what you can sell it for in the market if you clean it out, do the repairs, clean up the inside.
And another option for what you can sell a home for cash in Berks County, and when we buy cash, you don’t have to take anything out of the home. We’ll buy it as is, full of stuff, but if you want some things from the home, we never prevent you from going back in and getting them. In fact, a lot of times when we buy houses in Berks County for cash, whether they’re inherited or not, we find personal belongings that the family missed, like sometimes a wedding album or something like that, and we’re usually contacting the family to make sure they don’t want those belongings, so that they don’t get thrown out if it’s something the family wants.
So we give the family time to go back in, look at all the belongings in the house in Berks County, see what they want to take and what they want to leave behind. And before we go to closing, we give them time to go through that process so they can get out whatever they want. And we don’t rush them to closing. We’re ready to close whenever they want to close.
Sometimes we’ve gone to closing to get the family cash as quickly as possible and get the property off their plate, and then we let the family go in after closing to take out what they need. So we’re not rushing you through the process. We want you to have time to heal from what’s going on in your family. Having a loss like that is devastating, we’ve been there many times.
And then on top of that, having to deal with the house in Berks County can be very overwhelming. So we like to approach it very gently with families and do things on your timeline, not ours. Your timeline to give you time to go through the house that you inherited, take what you want, leave the rest behind, and then we buy the house cash as is.
If you inherited a home in Berks County, Pennsylvania, or you know anyone that has, and you’re looking for different options for selling, feel free to reach to us at any time, 610-816-6205, or berks610.com. We do free, no obligation consultations.