Contract signed by heirs before letters issue, or wait for the appointment?

The clause is the whole argument. I've read two versions of "contingent on appointment" and they do different things. One says the agreement is void if letters aren't issued within some number of days, which protects the buyer's earnest money and nothing else. The other says the heirs will use reasonable efforts to have the sale approved, which sounds like a promise and is close to unenforceable against people who change their minds.

So my answer is that early paper is fine if you know which of those you signed. Whether it binds anything at all is a question for an attorney licensed where the case is filed.

Six months of watching filings in my county and the appointment gap is usually four to ten weeks. That's a long time to be first in line with nothing.

I'd separate the paper from the position. What actually held my attention in the estates I've worked around wasn't a signature, it was showing up with a dumpster and hauling out the garage before anyone asked me to buy anything. Costs me a crew day. Nobody outbids the person who already did work in the house.

Early contracts, in my experience, mostly create a document the family shows their attorney, and the attorney's first instinct is to protect them from it.

Trying to follow this one. If the court hasn't appointed anyone yet, who is the seller on the contract? Are the heirs signing as themselves, or signing on behalf of an estate that technically has no representative? Those feel like very different pieces of paper to me and I'm not sure which one people mean when they say early contract.

ember, that's the right question and the answer changes the deal. If four heirs sign personally you need all four at closing, and the one who lives three states away is the one who stops answering the phone in week six.

Separate from the paper problem: the house doesn't wait. I've walked probate houses in February with no heat and pipes already gone, and by the time letters issued in April I was buying a gut instead of a cosmetic. If you're going to wait for the appointment, at least get permission to winterize. Cheap insurance on a house you might buy, and heirs almost always say yes because it's a problem taken off them.

I built a spreadsheet on exactly this and then didn't act on any of it, which is my whole pattern. What it told me was that the fallout rate on early contracts in my area looked like maybe half, and that half still cost me inspection time and a day of driving each. The other half closed sooner and at prices about six or seven percent under what I saw the later ones trade at.

So the early approach isn't free, and it isn't nothing either. What I never modeled is what the fallouts do to your name with the attorneys, which is probably the number that actually matters and the only one I can't get.

Dumb question that I'd rather ask here. Does earnest money even go anywhere at this stage? If there's no estate account open yet and no personal representative, who holds it? Because if the answer is "you don't put money down," then the early contract costs almost nothing and I don't understand why anyone waits.

compass, mine sat with the title company and it was $1,000, so yes, close to free. The cost wasn't the money.

Here's what happened. Two brothers signed in week one, both agreeable, price was fine. Week five the court appointed a third party because the brothers couldn't get along, and that person's job was to get the best price for the estate, which meant my contract was a floor for other offers rather than a deal. I ended up paying $23,000 over my signed number and still made money, but I'd been mentally spending that spread for two months. Now I sign early and underwrite as if the price will move.

quarry's story is the version I'd plan around. My rule after getting burned on scope: early contract yes, but the inspection clock doesn't start until letters issue and I have interior access with someone's written okay. I got talked into a full walkthrough and a roofer's bid on a house where the appointment took eleven weeks, and by the time we closed the scope had grown by about $14,000 because two more rooms of hoarding turned out to be behind a door I'd been told was a closet. Paid for that estimate twice.

So I'd vote early paper, late spending.