You will never have to come back here
You inherited a house in South Carolina and you live somewhere else. You have already made one trip. It was for a funeral, the house was full, and you flew home with a key and a problem.
I do the work here so you do not have to make that trip again.
Securing and re-keying the house. Getting the insurance right for a house nobody lives in, which is not the policy that is on it now. Emptying decades of belongings, through an estate sale or an auction where that makes sense. Shipping home the things your family actually wants. Clean-out and haul-away. Repairs and yard work. Photographs and a walkthrough video, so a sister in another state can see what you are looking at instead of taking your word for it. A documented value as of the date of death, for the probate file and for what the heirs will owe later. Then the sale itself.
The crews are paid directly, at their price, and their invoices go in the file. Nothing runs through me and I do not mark anything up.
What I put in writing, before you decide anything
I am asking you to trust a stranger with a house you cannot see. So here is what I commit to, in writing, at the start.
A written update every Friday, whether or not there is news. Most of what makes remote sellers anxious is silence. If nothing happened this week, the note says nothing happened this week, and why.
A four-hour callback window. You call or text during a working day and you hear back within four hours. Not “soon.”
A written scope before anything starts. What I am doing, what it costs, who pays for it, and what the estate is committing to. Nothing gets ordered off a phone call.
And one more, which is not a contract term but a commitment from me: if you ever want out, ask and I will release you. I would rather you leave early than stay stuck with someone you have stopped trusting.
The part nobody has told you yet
In South Carolina, title to real property passes to the heirs at the moment of death. It does not pass to the estate.
That has a consequence people find out about late, usually after they have already told a buyer yes.
Being named executor does not, by itself, give you the power to sell
The authority has to come from somewhere. Either the will contains an express power of sale, or the court has to authorise it. If neither is true yet, the house cannot close, no matter how good the offer is.
Two other things follow from the same rule:
- Estate real property passes by a recorded deed of distribution. Until that is recorded, the record does not show what everyone assumes it shows.
- If several people inherited the house together and nobody has sorted out who signs, you have a legal question before you have a real estate question. South Carolina has adopted the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, and that is the framework the court will use.
None of this is my work. It is the estate attorney’s work. It is the first thing I check before I take a listing, because it is the thing that stops closings, and I would rather find it in week one than in week nine.
If you do not have an attorney yet, say so and I will tell you which questions to ask. I do not take a referral fee from attorneys and no attorney pays me anything.
What it costs
The listing fee is agreed in writing before anything is signed, and it is stated in the scope document. It is at the top of the market and not above it. Your position as personal representative is a fiduciary one, and a beneficiary can question what the estate paid, so the file is built to answer that question rather than to survive it.
A documented date-of-death value, priced in writing before it starts and not contingent on a sale or on who lists the property. If your family keeps the house, the price is the same. This valuation service may not be used for the purposes of obtaining financing in a federally related transaction. Where an estate needs a licensed appraiser instead, I will tell you that rather than sell you the cheaper document.
The crews are paid by the estate, at their price. Clean-out, estate sale, locksmith, landscaping, repairs, shipping. I coordinate them. I do not take a cut of them.
The free part, and why it is free
I built Estate Watch, which gives families the South Carolina probate forms, the deadlines, the cost picture and one shared family record, free and permanently. Use it whether or not we ever speak again.
Two things worth saying plainly, because you should not have to work them out.
- Estate Watch does not recommend real estate agents. Including me. It cannot, and it takes no fee on a listing.
- I am the founder of it, and I am also a licensed real estate agent. That is a dual role, and I disclose it in writing at the start rather than letting you discover it.