It has been three months. You signed something. They said they were working on it. Every two weeks there is a new reason, and the reasons keep sounding a little less specific than the last one. When a cash buyer cannot close on an inherited house, this is usually how it looks from your side.

I’m Raul Bolufe. My company buys the share of an inherited house that belongs to one heir, across Texas and Florida. I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. It is what I watch happen to families over and over.

When a buyer cannot close on an inherited house, it is almost never because the money fell apart. It is because of something they were never going to be able to fix.

What they did

A buyer found the property. Maybe they mailed you, maybe they called. They offered a number for the whole house.

Here is the part that matters. They got one heir to sign a contract for the whole property. Probably you. And when you said the words that every one of these families says, that your brother and your aunt and your cousin in another state also own a piece, they told you not to worry. We will work it out with the other heirs. We will send it to our title company. We will get the title cleared.

They believed it when they said it. That is the thing people get wrong about this. Most of them are not con artists. They just have no idea what they agreed to, and by the time the buyer cannot close, they have already spent your months finding that out.

What the title company said

The contract goes to title. Title pulls the chain and finds a dead owner and no probate. Then they send back the only answer they can send.

Every heir has to sign. Not the one who signed the contract. All of them. And before that can even happen, somebody has to establish who the heirs legally are, with death certificates for everyone in the chain who died, a sworn affidavit from a family member, and two witnesses who knew the family and inherit nothing themselves.

Your buyer now has a contract to buy a whole house from a person who owns a fraction of it. That contract does not convey the house. It never did, and that is the moment the buyer cannot close.

Why they cannot fix it

This is the part nobody tells you, so I will.

Finding the other heirs is the job. Not a step in the job. The job. Nearly every time a buyer cannot close, this is the part that beat them.

It means pulling the deed history, building the family tree, running every name for liens, finding a cousin whose last known address is from 2011, calling a stepdaughter who thinks you are a scam, and then getting all of them to sign in front of a notary, in whatever state they happen to live in. Some of them are dead, which means you start over with their children. Some of them will not answer for six weeks. One of them will say yes and then stop returning calls.

A buyer who does one or two deals a year has no process for that. They have a contract and a title company and hope. So they wait, and they tell you they are waiting, and the reasons get thinner. That is the whole reason the buyer cannot close, and it will not change by waiting longer.

What it is costing you while you wait

This is why I care enough to write a page about it.

• You are under contract, so you cannot sell to anybody else. That is usually the entire point of the contract from their side.
• The taxes keep running. If the county was already suing, that clock did not pause for your buyer.
• Nothing is getting done to the house. It sits, and vacant houses do not improve.
• The family gets more tangled, not less. People die, people move, people stop speaking.
• At the end, a fair number of these come back with a lower number, because now you have waited six months and they know it.
• Nobody else can make you an offer while the paper is out there, so a buyer who cannot close still blocks the ones who could.

When a buyer cannot close, the delay is not a neutral thing that happened to everybody. It costs you and it costs you nothing to fix on their side, so there is no pressure on them to stop.

The two things that actually work

Sell your own share. You do not need anyone’s permission to sell the piece that belongs to you. One signature, one notary, one deed. That is what we buy, and it is the reason a share closes in the same situation where a buyer cannot close on the whole house. You get paid, you are out, and the rest of the family keeps their shares and their argument.

Or work with somebody who does the heir work themselves. If the goal is to move the entire property, then somebody has to go get every heir, and that somebody needs a real process, not a promise. We do that part in house. Our title report comes back in about 24 hours, and the heir research runs at the same time instead of after.

On a piece of land in San Jacinto County there were nine heirs spread across four states and nobody had signed anything in years. We had every one of them recorded in twenty one days.

On a house in Odessa there were eight heirs. Seven of them wanted out and one was still thinking about it. The seven got paid. We did not hold their money hostage waiting on the eighth, because we were buying shares, not the whole house.

Questions worth asking your current buyer

If you are still under contract with somebody, ask these. The answers will tell you a lot.

• Have you pulled the title work yet, and can I see it?
• Which heirs have you actually spoken to, by name?
• Do you have the death certificates?
• Who is preparing the affidavit of heirship, and who are the two witnesses?
• What is the date this contract expires?

That last one is the one people forget to ask. If they dodge the first two, the buyer cannot close and has not told you yet.

What this means for you

• A contract signed by one heir does not convey a house owned by several.
• The title company is not being difficult. It cannot insure what is not there, so the buyer cannot close no matter how the contract is worded.
• The hard part is finding and closing the other heirs, and most buyers have no way to do it.
• Every month you sit under contract costs you taxes, options and time.
• You can always sell your own share by yourself, even while the family argues.

The short version

• A buyer cannot close on a whole inherited house with one heir’s signature.
• Title will require every heir, plus the paperwork that proves who they are.
• Most buyers cannot deliver that, and when the buyer cannot close they string it out instead of saying so.
• Selling your own share needs one signature and does not wait on anybody.

If a buyer has had your family’s house tied up for months, call or text me at 936-380-6384, or fill out the form. Tell me the address, who passed away, and when that contract expires. I will tell you straight whether it can be saved.