My mother’s house just went on the market, which meant the asking price has gone public. As part of the probate process, the names of all of the heirs were publicly posted a while back. There are skeevy people who are tracking that kind of information, who instantly swoop in and contact the heirs, asking if they’d like a fast advance on their inheritance, for the price of a small, tiny, hardly even mentionable fee, so small that they don’t even mention it, and you won’t know about it until after the estate is settled.
It’s like a payday loan scam run by funeral-chasing ghouls. I think I’ve just learned about a whole ‘nother industry full of people I hate.
My whole family is about to get junkmail from these horrible people who promise painless advances on their inheritance, except for the big bite they take out of it (one company was going to skim off 20%) and the nuisance to the executor (me) and his lawyer. I’m just telling everyone to be patient, we’re making good progress on the estate, and I’m hoping we can get everything cleared up by Christmas, so I only have one complicated tax year.
(In good news, we’ve already had 3 people tour the house, so maybe it’ll go fast.)
Although only a few people have toured the house, I wonder if there’s already a noticeable profile of the average person buying houses in the area. You have to be relatively well-off to consider buying a 400k plus home. I hope the people touring are actual families or people intending to live there rather than those looking for their second summer vacation or Airbnb investment or anything else like that.
Seems an increasing proportion of the human species have adopted the role of parasite in the human ecology.
This is why you want to set up a trust. It won’t go through probate. And you by-pass all that stuff going public.
Long story short, I was not the executor (initially, but that’s the rest of the story!). My wife and I spent a week at my Dad’s house getting it ready to put on the market. Cleaning, painting, etc. Finally, it looked good. The executor sold it at “price immediate,” it was snapped up in a week and the new “owners” gutted the place, tarted it up and resold it at a huge premium. I don’t often think about the week we spent there polishing the place, but the rest of the story did involve lawyers, alas.
I hope the sale goes quickly. It took over a year for my parents’ place to sell, which was a real source of stress and frustration for my mum, who move into assisted living to be near my dad in care. There was nothing for her to do, but that didn’t matter, and being right after the peak of pandemic property boom made it feel like the value of the house was seeping away every month it wasn’t sold.
It really wasn’t that bad — she now has enough money to keep her well looked after until is until she well past the century mark, if she gets there — but the psychological toll of selling their home of 37 years was quite significant.
So I’m not surprised there are sharks in the water around the estate house sales, add in a little financial desperation and people are well primed to listen to their pitch.
A childless aunt of mine died a few months ago and I have been named in the will along with a half-dozen siblings and cousins. We have no idea how much we’re getting, but it could be relatively substantial, and that’s been dragging on because there was a house to sell there too. For me, anything would be a bonus, but one of my cousins — likely the most in need of shoring up his retirement fund — emailed the lawyers handling the estate asking how much longer it would take. He got a very terse reply essentially saying it will take as long as it takes, and that any further communications on the subject would only add to their fees, hence reducing the inheritance.
I will be sure to let everyone know if my share turns out to be worth more that the price of a Musky vote for Trump in Pennsylvania…
(It’ll probably just be a few thousand at most, but a man can dream of flying across the pond in premium economy, can’t he? :)