Selling an Inherited Home Through Probate in Los Angeles

What does it take to sell an inherited house in probate in Los Angeles?

If the home was not held in a living trust, selling it usually runs through Los Angeles Superior Court probate, which commonly takes 9 to 18 months versus about 55 days for a standard sale. The court appoints a Probate Referee to set the date-of-death value, and the sale follows either a streamlined path under full IAEA authority or a court-confirmation path with the 90 percent rule and an open overbid hearing. Most heirs also get a stepped-up tax basis, which often erases most of the capital gains.

By Paul Blair | June 7, 2026

You inherited a house, probably in the hills or on the Westside, there is no trust, and now there is a judge involved. That is the part nobody warns you about. Selling a home you inherited in Los Angeles is rarely just a real estate decision. It is a court process, a tax event, and very often a family negotiation, all running at the same time.

Here is how it actually works, and where the real decisions live.

First question: do you even have to go through probate?

Not every inherited home does. How the title was held at the date of death decides the path.

If the home was held in a living trust, you skip probate entirely. The successor trustee steps in with direct authority to sell. That is a cleaner, faster road, and I walk through it in detail in our guide on selling a home held in a living trust in Los Angeles.

If the home was held in joint tenancy or as community property with right of survivorship, it usually passes to the surviving owner outside of probate too.

If none of those apply, and the home was just in the decedent's name, you are most likely headed to probate. There is one important exception worth checking first.

The small-estate path. As of April 1, 2025, California raised the threshold for its expedited process. A primary residence valued at or under $750,000 can now transfer through a Petition to Determine Succession to Real Property instead of full probate. That can cut the timeline to roughly 2 to 6 months. In most of core Los Angeles, a single-family home clears $750,000 easily, so this path helps more in outlying areas than in Beverly Hills or the Hollywood Hills. Still, it is the first thing to confirm before you assume the long road.

The full probate timeline, start to finish

When full probate applies, you file a petition with Los Angeles Superior Court, usually within about 30 days of the death. The filing fee is $435. The court appoints a personal representative (the executor if there is a will, the administrator if there is not) and a Probate Referee who appraises the property as of the date of death.

From there, plan on 9 to 18 months. Here is the part most people miss: marketing the home can often begin well before the case fully closes, so the listing timeline and the court timeline overlap rather than stack. Even so, the court has to approve a final accounting before any money reaches the heirs, and that approval often takes another 2 to 3 months after escrow closes.

So if you are picturing a quick sale and a check, reset that expectation now. The home can sell in a normal window. The estate paying out is the slow part.

IAEA authority: the single biggest factor in your speed

This is the most important decision in the whole process, and it gets decided early.

When the personal representative files, they can ask the court for full authority under California's Independent Administration of Estates Act, known as IAEA. Full authority changes everything about the sale:

• The home can be listed, sold, and closed without a court confirmation hearing.
• The only requirement is a 15-day Notice of Proposed Action to the heirs.
• The 90 percent rule (more on that below) does not apply.

In other words, with full IAEA authority, the sale looks and feels close to a normal transaction. You accept the best offer, you open escrow, you close.

If the representative only has limited authority, or if any heir formally objects to the proposed sale, you fall back to the court-confirmation path. That is slower and far less predictable.

The court-confirmation path: the 90 percent rule and the overbid

If you land in court confirmation, two rules shape the sale, and both can surprise sellers.

The 90 percent rule. The accepted offer has to be at least 90 percent of the Probate Referee's appraised value. If the referee valued the home at $2,000,000, you cannot accept an offer below $1,800,000 and expect the court to approve it.

The open overbid hearing. Even after you accept an offer, the sale is not final until a confirmation hearing, and anyone can show up to that hearing and bid higher. The minimum overbid is set by formula: the original accepted price, plus 10 percent of the first $10,000, plus 5 percent of the balance.

On a $500,000 accepted offer, a competing buyer needs to arrive with at least $525,500, plus a 10 percent cashier's check in hand, before they can even open their mouth.

For sellers, the overbid can be a gift (it can drive the price up in the room) or a headache (your first buyer can lose the home at the courthouse after weeks of waiting). For the home itself, it means you want a listing strategy built for this format, not a standard one.

Selling with siblings, and the partition option

A huge share of inherited Los Angeles homes are owned by more than one heir, and that is where most of the friction lives. One sibling wants to sell now. Another wants to keep it. A third disagrees on price, on repairs, or on whether to buy the others out.

When co-owners cannot agree, any single heir has a legal lever: a partition action. That is a lawsuit asking a judge to order the property sold and the proceeds divided. It works, but it is slow and expensive, and it usually torches whatever goodwill is left in the family.

The better path is almost always to resolve it before anyone files. Early mediation settles roughly a third of California partition disputes, and it can pull the timeline down from around 12 months to 3 to 6 months while saving real money in legal fees. If you and your co-heirs are stuck, that is the room to be in, not the courtroom.

This is the kind of situation where a neutral, experienced listing broker earns their keep, because the decision is half real estate and half diplomacy.

The tax picture is better than you think

Here is the genuinely good news. Most heirs benefit from a stepped-up basis.

That means your taxable gain is calculated from the home's value at the date of death, not the price your parent or grandparent paid decades ago. A house bought in Laurel Canyon in 1985 for $300,000 and worth $3,000,000 today does not saddle you with gain on $2,700,000. Your basis steps up to roughly the date-of-death value, so if you sell near that value, the capital gains can be close to zero.

That is a different math than a normal sale, and it is worth understanding fully. Our breakdown of capital gains tax when selling a Los Angeles home covers how the gain is figured and where sellers trip up.

Two more tax items still apply, though:

• Documentary transfer tax. Los Angeles County charges $1.10 per $1,000 of value on the sale. That does not go away in a probate sale.
• Measure ULA. If the estate home sells above the City of Los Angeles thresholds (currently around 4 percent above roughly $5.15M and 5.5 percent above roughly $10.3M, indexed each year), the ULA transfer tax applies just like any other high-value sale. Estate sales are not exempt. On a Bel Air or Beverly Hills estate, that is a major line item, and it belongs in your net math from day one. Our Measure ULA guide for LA sellers lays out the tiers.

A note on disclosures

Probate sales get a partial break on disclosures. A personal representative who never lived in the property is generally exempt from the Transfer Disclosure Statement, the TDS. That exemption does not cover everything. The Natural Hazard Disclosure (the NHD) still applies, which matters a great deal for hillside, canyon, and coastal listings in fire and flood zones. And the duty to disclose known material facts never goes away, even in an estate sale.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to sell an inherited house in Los Angeles?

A full probate sale typically runs 9 to 18 months from filing to the estate paying out, though the home itself can often go on the market earlier. A primary residence valued at or under $750,000 may qualify for an expedited petition that takes 2 to 6 months. A home held in a living trust skips probate and sells on a normal timeline.

Do all heirs have to agree to sell the house?

Not necessarily. If the personal representative has authority to sell, the sale can proceed with proper notice to the heirs. When co-owners are deadlocked, a single heir can file a partition action to force a sale, but mediation is usually faster, cheaper, and far less damaging to the family.

What is the 90 percent rule in a California probate sale?

In a court-confirmation sale, the accepted offer must be at least 90 percent of the Probate Referee's appraised value. This rule does not apply when the personal representative holds full authority under the Independent Administration of Estates Act (IAEA), which is why securing full authority early matters so much.

Will I owe capital gains tax on an inherited Los Angeles home?

Often very little. Heirs generally receive a stepped-up basis, so the taxable gain is measured from the value at the date of death rather than the original purchase price. If you sell near the date-of-death value, the capital gains can be minimal. Documentary transfer tax and, on high-value homes, Measure ULA still apply.

Can someone outbid the buyer at the probate hearing?

Yes, on the court-confirmation path. Anyone can appear at the confirmation hearing and overbid using a set formula (the accepted price plus 10 percent of the first $10,000 plus 5 percent of the balance), with a cashier's check in hand. Full IAEA authority avoids the hearing entirely.

Where this leaves you

Selling an inherited home in Los Angeles is three jobs at once: a court process, a tax event, and often a family negotiation. The biggest levers are getting full IAEA authority early, pricing and marketing the home for the format you are actually in, and getting the tax math (stepped-up basis, transfer tax, and ULA) right before you list, not after.

Every estate is different, and the only way to know your real numbers is to run them against the actual property and the actual court posture. That is exactly the kind of situation I walk clients through before we list a single photo. If you are sorting out an inherited property and want a clear read on timeline, value, and net proceeds, start with a home value estimate or reach out directly and we will map it out together.

About Paul Blair

Paul Blair is the founder and broker of Grey Square, a virtual real estate brokerage representing buyers and sellers across Dallas and Los Angeles. With 22 years in the business and more than $200 million in closed transactions, Paul works the full range of the market, from luxury homes in the Park Cities and Preston Hollow to estates in the Hollywood Hills and across the Westside. Connect with Paul and the Grey Square team at greysq.com. TX TREC #9011505 · CA DRE #01792671.