Sell an Inherited House in Philadelphia

Philadelphia's row houses were built shoulder to shoulder, and that shows up in their titles. Party walls shared with the house next door, deeds that changed hands within a family and were never formally recorded, and gaps in the ownership chain going back a generation or two are all common on inherited properties here. On a traditional sale, any one of those can stall a closing for weeks while a title company untangles it. We deal with these situations regularly and take the work of clearing them onto ourselves, so an unrecorded transfer from decades ago becomes our problem to solve rather than a reason the deal falls apart.

Pennsylvania runs its own inheritance tax, and it works differently from New Jersey's. Here a surviving spouse generally owes nothing, but children and grandchildren do pay, at a fairly low rate, while more distant heirs and non-relatives owe more as the family connection grows fainter. The estate files through the Philadelphia Register of Wills, and the representative can only sell once that office grants them authority. We work within that timeline rather than rushing it, lining the closing up with where the estate actually stands so the sale and the probate paperwork move together instead of tripping over each other.

Whether the house is a South Philadelphia trinity that stayed in the family for fifty years, a Fishtown home near relatives who have since moved away, or a place in Fairmount or West Philadelphia that has sat empty since the funeral, its condition does not change our offer. Take what the family wants to keep and leave the rest where it is; the cleanout is ours after closing. Clearing it sooner rather than later helps in another way too, since a vacant Philadelphia property left unattended can draw Licenses and Inspections violations and the fines that trail them. Closing on a schedule you set ends that exposure and hands the whole thing off in a single step.