My father passed away in 2023 and this June my mother chose to move to an assisted living facility and that is going pretty well. Her house (the one we all grew up in) is in the same town, and siblings and I and my mom are trying to figure out whether it should be sold in the spring. She is in her 90’s and mostly waffles between sell it because she “should” and wait because there’s lots of stuff still in the house to be dealt with first. The house is insured as unoccupied rather than vacant which makes cleaning it out a timing issue.
It’s a tiny town, this is a big house. She does not need the money, and neither do any of us. But as an unoccupied house, it requires a certain amount of attention and although we have cameras in it, there’s always the risk of a break in, etc. It doesn’t have any major problems (except for dubious late 70’s decor) . I didn’t want to monopolize the Parents Caring for Parents threads so I am posting it here, thinking surely some others of you/us have already muddled through this.
We have always sold the houses as soon as possible. IMO, an empty house is just a problem waiting to happen and is a money sink in utilities, upkeep, and taxes.
And in our experience, it was easier dealing with what to do with the contents before a death rather than after.
We finally got our first two decent offers on my mom’s house after months. My vote is sell sooner rather than later. Start getting it ready now for sale in the spring.
It sounds like a special house since you were all raised there and your parents stayed long past kids at home.
Time to let another family enjoy it and take the burden off your plate. Even unoccupied things can go wrong and repairs might have to be made. Use the winter to go through things and set a date on the calendar to have it ready to go.
My in laws put their house on the market shortly after moving to AL. It sold immediately. They didn’t need the money. But it was just cleaner and easier to sell it rather than to have to keep the house up when it was unoccupied - mowing, handling things like possible storm damage, keeping it the proper temperature (super humid area), insurance, association fees, cleaning (you can’t just leave it without cleaning once in awhile!), etc.
My H’s cousins kept their mom’s house for several years after she passed. They met there for holidays. It’s not the decision we would have made, but that was the decision that worked for them.
My father put his house on the market after a short while in Assisted Living (basically once he realized he was not going back). It was under contract and empty when a pipe burst and caused quite a bit of damage. He got lucky and the buyer just took it as is (they were planning on gutting it anyway). In addition, everything in the basement was a total loss and so we didn’t have to do the cleaning out that would have needed to be done. The buyer just got dumpsters and emptied everything out.
Sell now, don’t wait. Also, selling will make you do the cleaning out that needs to be done (no more procrastination on that).
I haven’t read responses, so maybe someone else mentioned this, but if the house is worth a lot, then the tax advantage of waiting until your mom dies, assuming she doesn’t need the money, may make sense for the beneficiaries.
You didn’t mention if the thought of the clean out was holding you back and if that is one of the considerations I understand. I feel very fortunate, as my brothers and I had an adult sleep over and cleaned out our parents house over a long weekend. We had so many laughs, stayed up way too late going down rabbit holes and prepped the house for an estate company to come in and sell the remaining items. Our spouses still talk about how they missed out on what they thought would be a depressing chore and how we all treasure the memory. Our parents were already deceased and by waiting we lost the opportunity to ask about boxes of pictures and other things they kept they meant something to them and not to us - they might if if we had the chance to ask and hear their stories about certain items.
I love the idea of saying good bye to your childhood home and opening it up to a new family to love too.
I am sure not everyone will appreciate the humor, but will still play “hide the Hummel” - for some reason we found a box with Hummel figurines in the closet and once we confirmed our parents were not using them to smuggle drugs and they were actually our grandmothers, we kept one and he (boy playing a flute) shows up in different homes and places - if you get him then you have to display him for a year! Soon the kids will have their own places and all know that the Hummel will make an appearance - keeps them connected to great grandmother they never knew and grandparents they barely remember.
So to sell now it not to sell - I vote for sell now with all the others and their points and hopefully not all grief and some joy too with your siblings.
The following response does not apply to community property states, where the entire basis is stepped up at death of first spouse.
If the house has appreciated in value a lot since original purchase, there is an advantage to selling it within two years of your father’s death. If sold within two years, your mother can use the $500,000 capital gains exemption of a married seller versus the $250,000 exemption of a single.
50% of the basis of the house steps up to its value on the date of your father’s death, and the other 50% remains as the purchase price. (Hoping you had the house appraised when your father died.)
Using random numbers, assume house was purchased for $100,000 and is now worth $1 million. The new basis would be $500,000 from your father’s side +50,000 from your mother’s side, or $550,000. Add the $500K exemption, and you are now over the purchase price, and no capital gains taxes are due.
You would need to sub in actual numbers to see how much your mother will have to pay capital gains tax on.
If your mother waits until more than two years after your father died to sell, her capital gains exemption will drop down to $250,000. So taking the same $550,000 basis, add $250K + any capital expenditures + the real estate agent commission, and there won’t be a huge balance subject to capital gains. $150K or less, based on capital expenditures, subject to capital gains.
Thanks for all that – I hadn’t thought of that, and will pass it all on to the sibling handling taxes (we have divided The Work Of Mom amongst us). The house was built by my dad in 1974.
She has not been in the house since she moved out in June, fairly abruptly. Her decision caught us somewhat off guard, to be honest. Now, I wonder if we need to have her come visit it. There’s no sense in asking her, she says “no” as a reflex to everything under the sun.
We are going to struggle emotionally with losing the house, no question. Trying hard to just look at it like another task we have to do, like it or not. Mom had been asking the grands if there were things they would like, and her oldest captured it " I would like it all to stay the same, and have you and Poppa in the kitchen when I get there, and have it smell like waffles"
Definitely look at tax consequences, and look at them for a range of outcomes, including your mom living another 8+ years.
I’d consider whether familiy needs the house as s place to stay when visiting your mom. I have friends who ended up buying houses near the senior communities where the parent lived.
My bias is to sell though. And regardless of what you choose, start the ruthless cleanout now, even if you use it as your family hotel. Dealing with the “stuff” is a big job.
Look also at your insurance costs, property taxes, heating and cooling costs, having lights on sometimes, collecting junk mail, yard maintenance, etc. None of this is free.
In the Thumper family, when MIL passes, none of the spouses of her kids is having anything to do with emptying or selling the house. There is 3000 sq ft of “stuff” no one wants in a 1200 sq ft house. It just all needs to go.
There are no compelling reasons to hang on to the house. It’s going to be a money pit and there is nothing worse than sinking money into something for no reward whatsoever.
Good for your mom for having the courage to leave the family home. She is obviously very elderly now. I suggest gently encouraging her to give her say to clearing out and selling, while she is still around to do so. If she passes, it will just be more headache for you all, in addition to the sadness of clearing out her memories. At least while she is still here you all have the chance to involve her in the process.
Right now we (DH and I) are the only people likely to use the house as a hotel – and that’s certainly a factor when there’s no other obvious place to stay in town. I stay at the house more and more (I do hospital stays, etc.) but that’s not enough to stop the process, imho.
We are unconcerned about costs, there’s plenty of funds for that. Emptying the house just feels SO much like pushing her into a grave, I guess. Trying to get over that part is hard.
If you are staying there frequently and money isn’t a concern, that would be a valid reason to keep the house.
The emotions of emptying the house part - I’ve done both. IMO it was so much easier to do it when my parents were still living because we were able to understand what was really important to them and what wasn’t. After my dad died, there was a lot of guessing of what we should be keeping/selling/donating/tossing. I felt like it was easier to honor their wishes going through stuff when they were still alive.
Actually, emptying the house is very liberating. I felt HUGE relief at not leaving my kids to have to do that work for us. Hpefully I have many years left to live, but having lost two parents in recent years, I would not wish the burden on anyone. I so wish my mom had been able to have a say in clearing out her home, but she died suddenly and there was no conversation about it. It was sad, traumatic and stressful. Your mom does not want that for you, believe me.
My top tips for clearing out a house, having just moved:
First, get anything out that your mom holds precious. Small things like photos or special knick knacks. ASK HER what she wants, rather than give her a catalog of everything. If it’s important to her, she will remember it, assuming she is of sound mind.
Order a dumpster. Have it in the driveway and plan to leave it there for a month.
You and sibs need a weekend or two if possible. Label the stuff you want (we used index cards with tape). Have plenty of trash bags and boxes around for small trash as you go through stuff. Have a box or two for shredding. All the stuff you want to keep can go in one room near the front door. Use that as a staging area on the way out of the house,
If you are planning to sell/donate items, label them on that same weekend.
EASY WAY: There are house clearing companies who will just come and dispose of it all, which is probably the easiest thing to do. We didn’t want to do that because we felt it would be wasteful. For the HARD WAY (which I would do again), keep reading.
Anything that is definitely trash (broken ironing boards, furniture that’s been soiled by pets, etc…) put in dumpster, but don’t throw out stuff that isn’t broken because you will be AMAZED at what people will buy.
If you feel you can’t just trash perfectly good items (we could not, and it wasn’t about money), go to the next steps.
Get an estate sale company around. We used an online auction company. It was worth every penny. No crowds traipsing through, and they organized every single thing, from cataloging to pick up. They took 40% plus a fee, but we didn’t care because it was by far the easiest way to get a lot of stuff removed in a short time frame.
Then it got more difficult, but we really felt we couldn’t trash perfectly good things. I let friends take what they wanted. I scheduled a pickup with the Vets and they took 15 boxes. I donated some things to various local charities. I posted on every Buy Nothing/Take it Or Leave it page I could find. Finally, I left some things on the curb with a FREE sign. After that, anything left went in the dumpster.
Because no one is living in the house, it should be an easier process to clear it out. After you have taken what you, your sibs, and your mom want and need, the most time consuming thing is getting rid of the rest, which is why some people just throw it all away.
I’m sure you have a good handle on your mom’s finances.
BUT- you wouldn’t be the first family to have costed out 6-8 years of assisted living who ended up with 14-16 (ask me how I know). Or the first family to end up selling in a deeply depressed market vs. the frothy housing market we’ve all come to know (ask me what it’s like to literally dump a house after the 2008 meltdown. Everything had changed- underwriting standards for the mortgage; property insurance; even the costs of relatively minor things like a termite treatment or a broken shingle were WAY up-- while the news was reporting that contractors and home repair businesses were underutilized). The costs of keeping the house would have been huge (snow, maintenance, taxes, lawn care) so it was an obvious decision to sell- but at a greatly reduced price vs. what the plan had been.
We had a parent in “end stage” for almost a decade. Beat every statistical odd for this particular disease but what are you going to do? Even home care would have required huge dollars…
Good luck and hugs to you. Sometimes the cleanout is more uplifting than you think it will be…
MIL’s double wide in the 55+ community is on the market! FIL passed almost a year ago, she’s been in assisted living since January. A second marriage, so step siblings, half out of state. Home is 27 years old (they purchased new), the water heater has been replaced, that’s it. Currently driving around with a tea cart in the back of my minivan for SIL (who lives a 10 hour drive away). Sold my parents house after my dad passed, large 5 bedroom colonial, clean out, estate sale, realtor staging, I loved that house but at the end I was done (after paying for repairs, like the main waterline out to the street, which ripped up the lovely lawn, and a new pool heater). Property taxes were $16,000. House was in my dads name, plus my sister and I.
and they were actually our grandmothers, we kept one and he (boy playing a flute) shows up in different homes and places - if you get him then you have to display him for a year! Soon the kids will have their own places and all know that the Hummel will make an appearance - keeps them connected to great grandmother they never knew and grandparents they barely remember.