Holding on to an empty inherited house often costs more than letting it go
Right now, there is real money waiting for you in the sale of your vacant family house. But the longer that home sits empty, the less of it there will be to claim.
Houses don’t like to be abandoned. Critters and insects find their way inside and quietly begin the work of returning the structure to the earth. That’s the worst-case scenario. The best case? The roof holds out a few more years before it eventually fails — and once a roof goes, the interior follows. Fast.
At this point, you still have time to get what you want from the house and say goodbye while it looks like it did when you lived there.
I know how hard it is to decide to sell a parent’s home. I’ve been there myself. I’m not sure what was more difficult — imagining someone else changing everything my dad worked so hard to build, or knowing I couldn’t go back.
But I also know what happens when a family waits too long.
When my grandmother passed, her kids divided her six-acre property among themselves. The sibling who inherited the house intended to keep it — just in case he ever needed it. He was a pastor who always had a parsonage to live in, and he never visited the house, much less moved in. Over the years it deteriorated quietly. The roof eventually caved in. Everything left inside rotted. The house was recently torn down and hauled away.
Before it was demolished, I slipped inside uninvited and rescued a trivet that had belonged to her — a small piece of cast iron now sitting in my kitchen as the only memento I have of her home. No one had ever thought to ask if I wanted something. That trivet was all that remained.
I don’t wish that on anyone.
WHY TIMING MATTERS An occupied home holds its value. An empty one loses it steadily — through deferred maintenance, weather damage, pest activity, and the slow erosion of the interior. Every season you wait is equity leaving the property.
Right now, you can still walk through that house the way it was when your family lived there. You can take the things that matter. You can say a proper goodbye. And then you can let a new family bring new life and new purpose to those rooms — carrying the home forward rather than watching it disappear.
When that happens, you and your siblings each receive a share of the proceeds. Money you can invest in something that honors your family’s legacy in a way that’s yours to keep — not a deteriorating structure no one is using.
The alternative is letting it sit until there’s nothing left to salvage. I’ve seen it happen. It’s a loss no one planned for and everyone regrets.
If you’ll let me, I’ll market the property and work to get you the strongest price I can — so your family has the most to work with.
