Inspecting an inherited property

The ordinary scope, on a house nobody has been running

An inherited property gets a standard home inspection. There is no probate inspection product, no estate standard of practice, and no separate form. What this occasion needs on top of the ordinary scope is a short, specific list of additions that a long-unoccupied older house argues for, and one piece of preparation that matters more than all of them put together.

Three things make this different from any other inspection, and they compound rather than simply adding up. Nobody present knows the house. The systems have often been off for months or years. And the person commissioning the inspection usually owes a duty to somebody else — beneficiaries, co-heirs, a court — which changes what the report is for.

Each of those makes the other two worse. A house nobody can explain is harder to inspect; a house whose systems cannot be run produces a report full of gaps; and a fiduciary holding a report full of gaps is the person who has to justify the sale price.

Utilities on before the inspection: the single highest-value step

If you take one thing from this page: get the power, gas and water turned on and verified working before the inspector arrives, and build the lead time for that into the schedule rather than into the week of the inspection.

Here is why it dominates everything else. An inspector reports on what can be observed and operated using normal controls. Standards of practice do not require — and liability practice does not permit — an inspector to energize a shut-off utility, light a pilot, open a closed main or operate a disconnected system. If the electrical service is off, the panel is inspected but no circuit, fixture, receptacle or appliance is tested. If the gas is off, the furnace, the water heater and every gas appliance go unevaluated. If the water is off, nothing is run, no fixture is checked for flow or drainage, and no leak can be found, because a leak needs water in the pipe to exist.

What comes back is a report that reads “not inspected — utility off” across the systems carrying the most money. It is not a deficient report; the inspector did everything the engagement allowed. It is a report you paid full price for that answers few of your questions, and the only remedy is to restore the utilities and pay for a second visit.

Build the time in. Transferring accounts into the estate's name takes paperwork the utility will want proof of, a gas relight or meter set usually needs an appointment with somebody present, and an idle well or septic system may need its own service call before anything can be tested. If the utilities genuinely cannot be restored — sometimes they cannot — tell the inspector in advance and decide deliberately whether to buy a limited inspection now or wait. That is a defensible decision; discovering it at the door is not. Plan for one thing rather than fearing it: a supply system dry for a long time sometimes leaks when repressurized, and you want that discovered while somebody is standing there who knows where the main shutoff is.

Nobody present knows the house

In an ordinary sale the seller is a witness. They know which breaker trips, when the roof was done, which contractor did the addition, and what the stain in the hall ceiling was. Most of what a buyer learns about a house comes from that history rather than from the inspection, and in an estate sale it is simply gone.

Two practical consequences. First, the inspector's findings arrive without context, so conditions that a seller would have explained in a sentence instead become open questions: an unpermitted-looking addition, a capped gas line, a sump pump with no obvious discharge, a repaired area with no record of what was repaired. Expect the report to raise more questions than usual and to recommend more specialist evaluation than usual, because the ordinary first move — ask the owner — is unavailable.

Second, the paper record is the only history there is, and it is normally thrown out first. Before anybody clears the house, set aside in one box: appliance and equipment manuals, service and repair invoices, permits and inspection cards, roofing and HVAC contracts, warranty paperwork, well and septic records, and any insurance correspondence. That box is worth more than most of the contents of the house and takes an hour to assemble. Once a dumpster has been filled, the house has no history at all.

What the fiduciary duty changes

An executor or administrator is spending somebody else's money and selling somebody else's inheritance. That does not change what the inspection is, but it changes what the inspection is for: it becomes part of the record showing that the sale was made on an informed basis rather than a convenient one.

Treat the engagement accordingly. Order the inspection in the estate's name. Keep the scope, invoice, full report and photographs with the estate's records rather than in your email. Send the report to the beneficiaries at the time, not when somebody asks. If you decline an addition the inspector recommended, write down why. A documented decision made with information is defensible; the same decision made silently looks different a year later when a beneficiary is unhappy about the price.

Condition also feeds the valuation, and the valuation has deadlines. California's probate system is the clearest documented example. Under the Probate Referee Guide published by the state Controller's Office, a probate referee appraises estate property and must complete the appraisals within 60 days of receiving the inventory, and the inventory and appraisal must be filed with the court no later than four months after the court issues letters testamentary or letters of administration. The guide puts the burden of condition disclosure on the estate's representative rather than on the referee: any material fact that might affect the value of an asset should be disclosed to the referee in a letter submitted with the inventory and appraisal, and the guide asks for directions, landmarks, pictures or a contact for access to remote properties.

Read what that means for timing. The referee is not inspecting the house for you. You are expected to tell them what is wrong with it — and a dated inspection report is the most straightforward way to do that, which argues for having it in hand before the inventory goes in rather than after. California's deadlines are California's; every probate state sets its own, and yours should be read in your own code.

There is no institutional guidance on inspecting a probate property

Stated plainly, because it is unusual to be told: no federal agency, state agency, court system or standards body publishes guidance recommending a home inspection for an inherited or estate property, or describing how one should differ. Searches for published condition-assessment guidance for probate and estate sale returned law firm and brokerage marketing and nothing primary. The California referee guide above is the closest institutional document located, and it addresses valuation and disclosure rather than physical inspection.

So everything on this page is reasoning from the circumstances — vacancy, absent history, fiduciary exposure — rather than a recommendation handed down by an institution, and that is how it should be read. The inspection is not required of you. It is a judgment about whether you would rather learn the condition of the property on your schedule or learn it from a buyer's inspector during an option period, with the price already agreed.

The additions an unoccupied older house argues for

A sewer scope. The lateral from the house to the main is outside the inspector's scope everywhere, and vacancy makes the case stronger rather than weaker: a line nobody has run for a year is a line whose blockage, root intrusion or collapse will be discovered by the buyer's first laundry load. On an older house with an undocumented lateral this is the single most useful addition after the utilities themselves.

A fuel-burning appliance and chimney inspection by a specialist. The Consumer Product Safety Commission's home safety checklist directs owners to have fuel-burning appliances including furnaces and chimneys inspected by a professional every year and treats a chimney inspected and cleaned within the last year as the baseline condition. In an estate property that interval has almost always lapsed, often by years, and the general inspector's visual scope does not reach the inside of a flue.

A wood-destroying insect inspection, where the region and the construction warrant it. Vacancy removes the occupant who would have noticed.

A four-point, if the estate has to place or keep insurance. Vacant property is harder to insure than occupied property, and a property past the age at which carriers ask — more than twenty years, for the clearest published trigger — will need a four-point inspection on the carrier's form. That is a separate engagement from the home inspection and answers the insurer's question rather than yours.

What to skip: anything that duplicates what a buyer will do anyway, unless you need the answer in order to price. The estate is not obligated to pre-solve the house.

Selling as-is does not remove the reason to inspect

Most estate properties are sold as-is, and the common conclusion — that an as-is sale makes an inspection pointless — is wrong in a specific way worth being clear about. As-is governs whether you will repair. It does not govern whether you must disclose, and in most states a fiduciary seller's exemption from the standard disclosure form does not extend to concealing a known material condition. Nor does it stop a buyer from inspecting, renegotiating or walking.

What an inspection buys an as-is seller is the ability to price the house against the condition instead of against a hope, and to meet a buyer's inspection report with a document of your own rather than a surprise. If you do commission one, the fuller treatment of how to handle the findings sits on the pre-listing inspection page, and the buyer's side of the same transaction is on the as-is sale page.

What to do next

Utilities first, inspection second. Confirm with the inspector in writing that electricity, gas and water will be on and that the systems can be operated. If one of them cannot be restored, decide in advance what you are buying.

Save the paperwork before the house is cleared. One box: manuals, invoices, permits, contracts, warranties, well and septic records. It is the only history the house will ever have.

Get it done before the inventory and the listing. A dated condition report in hand supports the valuation, satisfies the disclosure burden the probate process puts on you, and leaves time to decide what to address. Afterward it is evidence in an argument instead of input to a decision.

Keep the record in the estate's file. Report, photographs, invoice, scope and the written reasons for anything you declined.

On cost: an inspection of an estate property is priced like any other — square footage, age, crawlspace or basement, outbuildings, travel — with the additions billed separately. The expensive version is the one performed twice because the utilities were off the first time, which is not a pricing problem but a scheduling one.

Frequently Asked Questions