Inheriting a house is one of the stranger financial events a person goes through. You are grieving, and at the same time someone is asking what you plan to do with a four-bedroom in Wedgwood that still has your mom's handwriting on the kitchen calendar.

I have sat at a lot of those kitchen tables. What I have noticed is that the families who come out of it well are not the ones who move fastest. They are the ones who understand the order of operations before they start making decisions.

Here is how I walk people through it.

First, figure out how the home was actually held

This one question shapes your next six months.

If the home was in a living trust, the successor trustee can usually sell it without probate at all. If there was a transfer on death deed, which Washington has allowed since 2014, title passes straight to the named beneficiary. If the home was owned by a married couple under a community property agreement, it typically passes to the surviving spouse outside of probate.

If it was held in one person's name with only a will, or with no will at all, you are probably headed to probate. Pull the deed from King County records or ask a title company for a property profile. It takes a day and it tells you which road you are on.

What probate looks like in Washington and how long it takes

Washington is one of the friendlier probate states in the country.

Most estates here are granted what are called nonintervention powers. Once the court appoints a personal representative, that person can generally sell real estate without going back to a judge for approval on every offer, counter, and repair credit. That alone removes months of friction.

On timing, plan on roughly four to eight months from the date of death to a clean closing. Filing to appointment usually runs two to four weeks. There is also a creditor claim period that runs four months from the date notice to creditors is published. You can often list and even close inside that window, but you want your attorney steering that call, not a blog post.

If the home was in a trust, none of this applies and you can move in weeks rather than months.

The tax piece most people get wrong

Almost everyone I talk to assumes taxes are going to eat them alive. Usually the opposite is true, and the reason is stepped-up basis.

When you inherit property, your cost basis resets to the fair market value on the date of death. Say your parents bought in Ballard in 1978 for $48,000 and the home is worth $900,000 the day they pass. Your basis is $900,000, not $48,000. Sell a few months later for $910,000 and you are looking at gain on roughly $10,000. Not $862,000. That is the single most valuable thing in this article.

A few other pieces worth knowing. Washington has no state income tax, and the state capital gains tax specifically excludes real estate. Washington does have its own estate tax, paid by the estate rather than by you, with an exemption the legislature raised to $3 million effective July 2025. That catches more Seattle families than you would expect, because a paid-off house here plus retirement accounts adds up fast. And when you sell, the estate owes real estate excise tax, which lands somewhere in the range of 1.6 to 3.5 percent once you combine the graduated state rate with the local portion.

Get a date-of-death value before you do anything else

Because your basis is set at the date of death, that number matters and you should document it properly. A retrospective appraisal costs a few hundred dollars and gives you something defensible if the IRS ever asks. A screenshot from a home value website does not.

I am not a CPA and I am not an estate attorney. Hire both. The cost is small next to the mistakes.

Prepping and pricing an inherited home in the 2026 Seattle market

Seattle today is not the market your family remembers. King County inventory is up roughly 35 percent year over year, we are sitting near 2.9 months of supply, the median sale price is around $875,000 after a modest pullback, and about one in three listings is taking a price cut. Rates are holding in the mid-6 percent range.

Translation: buyers have choices again. Homes that show well and are priced honestly still sell. Homes priced on nostalgia sit, and sitting is expensive when the estate is covering taxes, insurance, and utilities on an empty house every month.

Most inherited homes I see need three things and not much more: a deep clean, a cleared-out interior, and honest attention to the deferred maintenance a buyer's inspector will find anyway. Full renovations almost never pencil out. In Seattle, the side sewer is the sleeper issue. A scope costs around $250 and can save you a $20,000 surprise in the middle of negotiation.

One practical note: call the insurance carrier the week you find out. Most standard homeowners policies limit coverage once a home has been vacant for 30 to 60 days, and an uninsured empty house is a genuinely bad way to lose money.

Your first five steps

1. Find the documents. Will, trust, deed, mortgage statement, property tax bill.
2. Secure the property. Change the locks, forward the mail, tell the insurance carrier the home is vacant.
3. Talk to a probate attorney before you sign or sell anything. One hour, and it will save you months.
4. Get a date-of-death valuation from a licensed appraiser.
5. Do not clean it out yet. Give family a real window to claim what matters to them.

The hardest part of this is almost never the real estate. It is the family conversation, the timing, and the guilt about selling a house someone loved. What I can do is take the transaction off your plate so you have room for the rest of it. If you have inherited a home in Seattle and you are not sure what the first move is, reach out. My team at Emerald Group has walked families through this more times than I can count, and I am glad to talk it through with you even if you end up deciding to wait a year, or not to sell at all.

Ready to sell in Seattle? Brennen Clouse at Emerald Group is here to help. Call or text 206-899-9101 or visit emeraldgroupre.com.