PropSolvers — Jefferson · Madison · Marshall
Someone you loved has died, and now there is a house, and people already asking what you plan to do with it. You do not owe anyone an answer this week. When you are ready, the question that matters is not what the house is worth. It is who is allowed to sell it. Usually a court settles that, not the family. There is one exception, and it is explained below.
The signing chain
Authority to sell a deceased person's house comes from a document the probate court issues. Until it exists, nobody can sell for the estate — not the family, not the oldest sibling, not the person who has been paying the water bill.
If there is a will, the court issues Letters Testamentary to the executor it names. If there is no will, it issues Letters of Administration to an administrator. Either document is the thing that creates authority. Nothing before it counts.
The court-appointed personal representative signs the listing agreement, the purchase contract and the deed on behalf of the estate. This is true even when several heirs will ultimately share the money.
If a will names one of four siblings as executor, that sibling acts for the estate and the other three do not sign the deed. They have a financial interest. They do not have signing authority. Confusing the two is the single most common reason a probate sale falls apart late.
No heir, no sibling, and no attorney can sign a deed for the estate until the court has appointed someone. You cannot legally transfer title or finalize a sale until the probate court appoints a personal representative and authorizes the transaction.
So the real first question is not what is it worth. It is: has the court issued Letters yet, and to whom?
Alabama procedure, described generally. Estates differ enormously — a small estate, a surviving spouse on the deed, a property held in trust, or an heir who cannot be located all change the picture. This is orientation, not legal advice.
The exception
In Alabama a house passes to the heirs at the moment of death when there is no will (Ala. Code § 43-2-830). It does not wait for a court. What the court normally supplies is proof of who those heirs are, and one person with authority to sign for all of them.
When the family can supply that proof itself, the estate sometimes never has to be opened. The tool is an affidavit of heirship: a sworn statement, signed by someone who knew the family but does not inherit, naming the person who died, the date, and every heir under Alabama's intestacy rules. It is notarized and recorded with the county. The heirs then sign the deed together.
It only works when all of the following are true:
Alabama has no statute that blesses this for real estate, so it lives or dies on whether the title company will insure the sale. Many will not on an affidavit alone, especially in the first year or two after a death, and a buyer who needs a bank loan usually cannot close on one at all. A cash buyer has more room, but the same title company still has to say yes.
Tell us who died, when, and who is left. We will map the heirs with you, have our closing attorney check whether the title company will accept an affidavit for this house, and if it will, prepare and record the affidavit and the heirs' deed as part of the sale, at our expense. If it will not, we will say so plainly and help you open the estate instead. Either way, you do not pay to find out.
One more date that matters: a will that is not filed for probate within five years of the death stops being effective (Ala. Code § 43-8-161), and the house then passes as if there had been no will. Old family houses that were never settled often sit in exactly this situation.
What the calendar looks like
Once Letters are granted, Alabama requires a Notice to Creditors to be published for three successive weeks (§ 43-2-61). Creditors then generally have six months from the grant of Letters to file claims against the estate (§ 43-2-350).
That six-month window is the reason probate feels slow, and it is also why the clock is worth understanding early. Waiting to start the conversation until the window closes usually adds months to something the family already wants finished.
A sale can often proceed during administration with the right authority and court involvement. Whether that is true for your estate is a question for the attorney handling it — but it is worth asking, because the default assumption that "we have to wait until probate is completely over" is frequently wrong.
The case number, which county's probate court has it, whether there was a will, who was appointed, and whether Letters have actually issued. With those five things a conversation takes ten minutes. Without them it takes three weeks.
Where we actually fit
An inherited house in decent condition, with heirs who agree and no time pressure, should go on the open market. It will net more than we can offer. That is not modesty, it is arithmetic, and we will say it on the phone.
Where a cash sale genuinely helps: the house needs work nobody wants to fund, the heirs live in different states and cannot manage showings, the estate needs liquidity to settle debts, or the family simply wants it finished rather than optimised.
We work in twenty-eight ZIP codes across Jefferson, Madison and Marshall counties. If the property is outside them we will tell you in the first minute. See where we buy →
Working out who has authority to sign is something we do as a matter of routine. If you are not sure where your estate stands, call and ask — we will walk through it with you whether or not you ever sell us anything. It costs us a phone call and it saves families weeks.