“Mom passed, the house is still in her name, and I don’t even know where to start.” If that is you, and you are sitting at the kitchen table wondering what to do with inherited house paperwork you have never seen before, you are not behind. You are right on time.
I’m Raul Bolufe. My company buys inherited houses and heir shares across Texas. I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. It is what we have seen on our deals.
Most families call me years after a parent dies. By then the taxes have piled up and nobody opens the mail anymore. This guide is the what to do with inherited house list I wish they had in the first month. What to get, what to look up, what not to sign, and what your choices are once the dust settles.
Every story here comes from our own files. Names are left out.
What should you do first when you inherit a house in Texas?
Breathe. Then get three pieces of paper in front of you.
- The death certificate, with extra copies.
- The deed, or at least the county record that shows whose name is on the house.
- The county tax page for the property.
That is the whole first step. Almost every question about what to do with inherited house problems comes back to those three. Who died and when. Who owns it on paper. What is owed.
You do not need a lawyer to look any of that up. You do not need to decide anything yet. You just need to know where you stand before the letters start making decisions for you.
Why does the first month after a parent dies matter so much?
Because nothing about a house changes on its own when somebody dies.
The deed still has their name on it. The tax bill still goes to their address. The county does not know. The mortgage company does not know. The city does not know either.
That is the trap. Because nothing changes, nothing gets done. A year goes by. Then five. The problems grow quietly, and the family finds out about all of them at once, usually from a letter with a sale date on it.
The first month is the cheapest month you will ever get. Knowing what to do with inherited house bills in those first weeks can save you years of trouble. Boring is underrated.
What paperwork do you need after a parent dies?
Start with the death certificate. Order it now, and get more than one copy. The title company will ask for it, and so will almost everybody else.
On Maywood Drive in Houston, three sisters agreed on everything. That almost never happens, and it still was not enough. What they did not have was their father’s death certificate. His death had involved a police report, and the certificate was not something they could pull out of a drawer. We worked it through, but that one piece of paper was most of a wait that ran for months.
So if anybody asks you what to do with inherited house paperwork first, that is the answer. The death certificate. Then everything else.
Next, look for a will or a trust. That is the second item on any what to do with inherited house list. Check the drawers, the safe, the file box in the closet.
If you find a will, do not assume it settles things. Recording a will at the county is not the same as taking it to court. Cath, the paralegal we work with, put it in plain words for me. Recording a will is paperwork. Probating it is what gives the will its power.
If you find a trust, keep the whole document. On our deal in Porter, half of a house was in a trust. The person the trust named signed the deed, and nobody in the family had to prove anything.
If you want the bigger picture on the court side, I wrote about the Texas probate process from the heir’s side.
How do you find out whose name is on the deed?
Look the property up on your county appraisal district website. Type in the address or the owner’s name. It takes a few minutes, and it is the cheapest what to do with inherited house step on this page.
Here is the surprise. The name there is not always your parent’s.
Outside Alvarado, in Johnson County, a family had two lots that their granddad bought and paid for over time. The land never made it into their name. Nobody changed a thing for decades, and the paper trail ran all the way back to the 1850s. The family thought of it as theirs. The county did not.
When people ask me what to do with inherited house papers, this is the part I push hardest. The paper decides who owns what, not what the family remembers.
If the name on the record is somebody who died a long time ago, you are dealing with what people call heir property. We wrote a whole page on Texas heir property if that sounds like yours.
What if there are back taxes on the inherited house?
Screenshot the county tax page. Owner name, how much is owed, how many years, and whether there is a lawsuit. Save the picture somewhere you will find it again.
In Missouri City, nobody looked, and the taxes ran sixteen years before the family talked to us. On six acres near Shepherd, by the time we got involved, the county already had a tax sale date on the calendar. You want to know that in month one, not year five.
Back taxes are the part of what to do with inherited house problems that families avoid the longest. I get it. Nobody wants to see that number.
But back taxes are not the end of the story. They are a deadline. If you sell to us, the taxes come out of our side, not yours. Property taxes and IRS liens get paid, not negotiated. Other liens and violations are different. Once you sell to us, liens and violations become our problem. We call, we negotiate, we pay.
If taxes are what keeps you up at night, read how we handle an inherited house with back taxes in Texas.
Who are the heirs, and do they all have to sign?
Write down every possible heir. Every child, including the ones nobody talks to. If a child has already passed, write down their kids. Add a city and a phone number if you have one.
Guessing is fine. We verify.
Of everything on this list of what to do with inherited house tasks, the heir list is the one families skip. Then it turns out to be the one everything waits on.
On that land near Shepherd, nine heirs in four states owned a piece, and four of them were great grandchildren. The heirs texted us the marriage dates and death dates themselves. The list you make now is the list everyone will need later.
The heir list is not about who deserves what. It is about who has to sign.
Here is something most families do not know. To sell the whole house, everybody on that list has to sign. But each heir owns a piece, and on our deals, each heir can sell their own piece. We buy individual shares even if not everyone agrees. If that is where your family is stuck, here is how to sell your share of an inherited house in Texas.
Should you open the mail addressed to your parent?
Yes. All of it. Especially the envelopes with your parent’s name on them.
In Missouri City, the tax letters kept coming addressed to a man who had died. Mail with a dead man’s name on it is the easiest mail in the world to ignore. Sixteen years of it.
In West Columbia, one relative let a certified letter sit at the post office for weeks. The letters do not stop because nobody reads them. They just get worse.
If you are not sure what to do with inherited house mail, here is my rule. Open it, take a picture of it, and put it in one folder. You can figure out what it means later. You cannot figure it out if it is in the trash.
Can you just give the inherited house to the city?
On our deals, the families who thought that was their only option were wrong.
In West Columbia, a family had a small house with a six figure lien on it and a demolition order from the city. Their plan was to hand the property over and walk away. Instead, one of the daughters texted my team.
We bought it. We settled that lien for a small fraction. We called the county, explained the plan, and got the demolition order lifted. The family got paid.
A lien letter is a starting number. It is not the final word. If you are deciding what to do with inherited house liens, start by assuming the number can come down, and let somebody whose job it is make the calls.
What if the inherited house is headed for a tax sale?
Call someone before the sale date. Not after.
In Brazoria County, three heirs owned a lot on County Road 257 that was headed to the tax auction. They figured it was already over. It was not. They still owned it, so they could still sell it. They signed with us, we cleaned up the title, and they got some money before the auction instead of nothing after.
Up until the sale, the land is yours. After, there is nothing left to sell.
If you are reading this with a sale date on the calendar, the answer to what to do with inherited house deadlines is simple. Pick up the phone this week.
The house that waited sixteen years
Here is what happens when nobody asks what to do with inherited house mail until it is too late. Missouri City, beat by beat.
- A man died and left his wife in the house they shared.
- The mortgage payment kept going out every month, like always. Nobody told the mortgage company he had died.
- The property tax bills, still addressed to him, did not get paid. One year became sixteen.
- The county record still showed his name. His daughter, I’ll call her Dana, returned a call from Marchel on my team in the spring.
- Dana pushed hard on price, and I respect that. We agreed on a number and signed.
- The title company asked the mortgage company for a payoff and found out, sixteen years late, that the borrower had died. Everything stopped while the documents got gathered.
- Her mother almost backed out. We waited. We closed at the start of summer, and those sixteen years of back taxes became our problem instead of hers.
Every item on this what to do with inherited house checklist would have made that story shorter. Not one of them would have cost the family a dollar.
Should you keep the inherited house, sell it, or sell your share?
Once you have the three papers and the heir list, you have real choices. This is the real what to do with inherited house decision, and it belongs to you. Here is how I lay it out on the phone.
Keep it. If somebody in the family wants to live there and can keep up the taxes and the insurance, that can work. Just know the name on the deed still matters. Somebody has to get it out of your parent’s name eventually.
Sell the whole house. If everybody on the heir list agrees, you can sell it together. If the title is not clean, or the house needs work, we buy the whole thing as is. Here is how we buy inherited houses for cash in Texas.
Sell your share. If the family does not agree, or one sibling lives there and will not move, you can sell just your piece. That is most of what we do.
Buy out a sibling. If you want the house and your siblings do not, I wrote about how to buy out a sibling’s share of an inherited house.
And if nobody wants to go to court at all, read how families sell an inherited house without probate in Texas. On most of our deals, nobody went to court.
First month checklist at a glance
Here is the whole what to do with inherited house checklist in one place, with the deal that taught us each step.
| Step | Why it matters | What we saw |
|---|---|---|
| Get the death certificate, plus copies | Title companies ask for it on every deal. | On Maywood Drive, one missing certificate was most of the wait. |
| Find out whose name is on the deed | The record decides who has to sign. | Outside Alvarado, the land was never in the family’s name, and the paper trail ran back to the 1850s. |
| Screenshot the county tax page | You learn what is owed and whether there is a lawsuit. | In Missouri City, taxes ran sixteen years before anyone looked. |
| List every possible heir | Every heir on that list owns a piece. | Near Shepherd, nine heirs in four states, four of them great grandchildren. |
| Open the mail | The letters carry the deadlines. | In West Columbia, a certified letter sat at the post office for weeks. |
| Do not hand the house to the city | Liens and orders can be worked down. | In West Columbia, the lien settled for a small fraction. |
| Call before any sale date | Before the sale, you still own it. | On County Road 257, the heirs got paid before the auction. |
What this means for you
- Nothing happens to a house on its own after a parent dies. That is exactly why knowing what to do with inherited house paperwork early matters.
- The death certificate, the deed and the county tax page are the three papers everything else depends on.
- The heir list is about who has to sign, not who deserves what.
- Liens, back taxes, a demolition order, even a sale date. None of them are the end. They are deadlines.
- You do not have to fix any of it yourself. Once you sell to us, the taxes, liens and violations are ours to handle.
The short version
- Get the death certificate, and copies.
- Find the deed and see whose name is really on it.
- Screenshot the county tax page.
- List every possible heir, with a city and a phone number.
- Open the mail.
- Do not sign anything you do not understand.
- Do not give the house to the city.
- Call before any sale date.
- If you are still stuck on what to do with inherited house problems, you can sell your share or the whole house as is.
Frequently asked questions
How soon after a parent dies should I deal with the house?
In the first month, if you can. You do not have to sell anything that fast. You just need the death certificate, the deed record and the tax page in hand. The sooner you know what to do with inherited house paperwork, the more choices you keep.
Do I need probate before I can do anything with the house?
On our deals, most families never went through probate. An affidavit of heirship, which is a sworn family tree signed in front of a notary with two witnesses who knew the family, did the job on a lot of them. Here is what an affidavit of heirship is in Texas. If the will matters to your family, talk to a probate attorney.
Who pays the property taxes after a parent dies?
Somebody has to, or the county eventually files a lawsuit. On our deals, the taxes kept running in the dead parent’s name until someone dealt with them. If you sell to us, the back taxes come out of our side.
What if a sibling is living in the house?
Families ask me what to do with inherited house situations like this all the time. It is common, and it does not stop you from selling your share. On our deals, the person living there was usually the last piece of the puzzle. Once you sell to us, that becomes our job.
Can I sell the house if my parent still had a mortgage?
In Missouri City, a mortgage was still being paid on a house whose borrower had died years earlier. The title company got the payoff, and we closed. It slowed things down. It did not stop the sale.
What if I live far away from the house?
You can still handle it. On our deals, a mobile notary comes to you. One sister on Walnut Ave in Odessa signed her share from a hospital bed hundreds of miles from the house.
Whether you are one month after a parent dies or five years past it, call or text me at 936-380-6384, or fill out the form. Tell me the address and who passed away. I will tell you what to do with inherited house paperwork you still have, and which of these steps we can take off your plate.
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About the author
Raul Bolufe has bought and sold real estate since 2012, closed more than 800 deals, and paid more than 100 heirs for their share of inherited property across Texas and Florida. He hosts the Flipping Miami Podcast. More at raulbolufe.com.
Read next
- How to sell your share of an inherited house in Texas, even if the other heirs won’t
- How to Sell an Inherited House Without Probate in Texas
- What Is an Affidavit of Heirship in Texas? The One Paper Almost Every Inherited House Needs