What do I do with an inherited house during the Coronavirus?
You're still able to sell your house if you want to. With virtual viewings and contactless sales, you can complete your sale.

If you have recently inherited a house, you may be thinking about what you want to do with it. Knowing what your options are allows you to make the best decision for yourself. It can depend on your personal circumstances – with the coronavirus pandemic currently terrorising the country, many homeowners are taking all of the measures that they can to sell their extra assets to support themselves through this uncertain time. But what’s the right decision for you? We Buy Any House have compiled some of the most-asked questions that we are currently receiving from our customers with inherited houses to try and give you all of the information you need to make your decision.

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What are my options with an inherited house?

Often, inheriting a property can be a very emotional time and can leave you confused about the best option. There are several options when you inherit a property, and you’ll need to decide which is the best option for you in your current situation. Usually, inheritors of a property choose one of two options; to sell the house or to rent it out. Renting a house can be beneficial, bringing in a steady income, but it also has its negatives. During this pandemic, it’s likely to be much harder work to find tenants than it would have been previously, especially with the new measures in place to ensure social distancing.

This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible – there’s still a demand for rented properties. You may find someone willing to move into your inherited house, but making the arrangements currently may be a lot of work. There’s every chance that renters will wait until the pandemic is over before looking to move. This means that you’ll have to pay the running costs, such as council tax and any potential bills for an empty house for a while before a tenant moves in and their rent covers them. There is another negative to renting an inherited property, and that’s the commitment that it requires. Becoming a landlord can be hard work and isn’t for everyone, as you’ll have to take on the maintenance of the property, as well as finding tenants to live there. You can look at getting an agent to do this work for you, but you will have to pay for it, so often landlord choose to do this themselves to save extra costs.

Selling an inherited house can be the more popular choice, purely because it tends to be an easier path than renting.

Can I still sell a house at the moment?

Depending on the path you take to sell your house, it can be a bit more difficult during the pandemic, but it’s by no means impossible. Choosing the traditional estate agent route will, on average, take around 6 months to sell a house, but with the coronavirus outbreak, most transactions have been halted. For some people, this makes life incredibly difficult if they were relying on selling their house before the pandemic, especially if they had inherited it and wanted to get it off their hands.

Thankfully, we’re still here to help you if you’re in that position and are concerned about the delay of your sale. We are a quick sale, cash buying company, so we buy houses in as little as seven days. With an inherited property, you’re likely not living in it, meaning you don’t have to worry about finding somewhere else to move to, and giving you more freedom for your timeframe. This allows us to buy your house fast, especially compared to the traditional selling route with an estate agent. We also take care of all of the legal costs, giving you one less thing to have to think about.

'Can We Buy Any House help me sell my house?' – Learn how we can help you today!

Are house values going to drop?

Currently, it’s impossible to say precisely what will happen to the property market over the next six months as these are unprecedented times. It’s very difficult to predict exactly how the market will be affected as this has never happened before, but some parallels can be looked at to give a good idea of what may happen. From our research, we can see that the market is still quite active at the moment, with homeowners still looking to sell and prospective buyers arranging viewings. The most likely outcome is that in the next six months, prices are expected to drop. There isn’t a guarantee of this, and there isn’t any suggestion as to how dramatically they could decline, but the pandemic will likely negatively affect the market.

This essentially means that for anyone who was considering selling their house in the next year or so may want to sell now, rather than waiting and potentially suffering from the value decrease that’s likely to strike in the coming weeks.

How can I sell my house now?

We’ve changed the way we work to keep you – and us – safe throughout the whole process. Starting with a phone call to determine exactly what it is you’re looking for and how we can help, to virtual viewings that will confirm the offer that we can make for your property. As a cash buying company, there aren’t the delays in waiting for mortgage approvals or the risk of a break in the chain. We do everything we can to keep things quick and easy, allowing you to proceed with your sale in as little as seven days.

We know that selling now doesn’t seem like the most straightforward task, which is why we’ve done everything we can to help you achieve your sale. If you’ve recently inherited a house and you think that selling it is the right option for you, get in touch with us today. We can provide you with a free quote for the house, along with virtual viewings, so you don’t have to worry about having multiple visits to sell the house, keeping you safe.

We buy any home in as little as 7 days, or timescales to suit you. Head to our website for more information. 

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