What do I need to sell an inherited house in Texas?

To sell a house you inherited in Texas, you first need to establish your right to inherit it and get that into the paperwork, and an attorney decides the path to do it based on your situation. In the meantime, the house still needs care and its bills keep coming, and once the paperwork is ready, a real estate professional guides you through the sale.

What this article answers

• What should I do first if I inherited a house?
• Do I need an attorney to sell an inherited house?
• What is an affidavit of heirship?
• What happens to the mortgage on the house?
• What happens if there is more than one heir?
• Do I have to fill out a Seller's Disclosure if I never lived in the house?
• When is the right time to put the house on the market?
• What do I do with the house in the meantime?

The short answer

• Take your time to recover and get your thoughts in order, without trying to solve everything at once.
• An attorney determines your right to inherit and the path to follow, which can be a probate case in court or an affidavit of heirship.
• Meanwhile, the mortgage and the utilities still get paid, and the house still gets looked after.
• When more than one heir owns the house, every owner signs the sale.
• Whether you fill out the Seller's Disclosure depends on who is selling: the executor of the estate is not required to provide it, and heirs who sell in their own names are.

What should I do first if I inherited a house?

I would say the first thing is to give yourself time to think, reflect and recover, at least a tiny bit, without trying to solve everything at once, so you can put your thoughts in order and process, little by little, what is happening and what comes next. And look for professionals who have, above all, the compassion and patience to explain things to you.

Do I need an attorney to sell an inherited house?

In my opinion, yes. Before selling, you need to figure out what your relationship was to the person who passed away and whether it gives you the right to inherit the house, and the attorney is the one who decides which path you need to take and which documents you need to put the house in your name. To choose it, the attorney looks at whether there was a will, whether any debts were left, who the heirs are and how many there are, what the marital status of the person who passed away was, and how the house was bought.

Texas has different paths. Some of them go through a court process, known as probate, and others do not, like the affidavit of heirship, which can sometimes be used when there was no will. A real estate agent can also recommend an attorney they work with, so they can follow the process closely.

What is an affidavit of heirship?

It is a document in which someone who knew the person who passed away describes who their family was, to put in writing who their heirs are. Your part is finding the people who will sign it as witnesses, who are two people who knew the family and do not inherit anything. In many cases a law office drafts the affidavit, and some title companies have their own form. Then it is notarized and recorded in the county where the house is located, so it becomes part of the public records.

If you come from Latin America, the notary can be confusing, because in many of our countries the notary is a lawyer. Here, the notary only confirms who signed a document, and Texas law does not allow a notary to draft legal documents or give advice about them.

What happens to the mortgage on the house?

The loan does not go away when the owner passes away. The first step is finding out whose name it is in, because it could be in the name of another owner, and either way the payments need to continue so the loan stays current. Federal rules require the mortgage company to give you information about the loan once it confirms that you are the person who inherited the house, even if you did not sign that loan.

The mortgage company may ask you for a certified copy of the deed. In many counties you can order it online, on the County Clerk's website, and it arrives by email, although some mortgage companies ask for a copy with a raised seal, which you get in person. I would order the online copy first and, if the mortgage company asks for the other one, then take that step, because that way you can move faster.

What happens if there is more than one heir?

When the house belongs to more than one heir, every owner signs the sale contract, so an heir who does not want to sell, or who cannot be found, holds up the whole sale. In my experience, it helps a lot when the heirs talk early about who wants to sell and who pays the mortgage, the taxes and the insurance in the meantime. If one of the heirs lives in another state or another country, they can still sign, and I recommend having that coordinated ahead of time, and not waiting until the days before closing, to avoid stress and confusion for both the sellers and the buyers.

Do I have to fill out a Seller's Disclosure if I never lived in the house?

It depends on who is selling the house, not on whether you lived in it. This confuses a lot of people, because some inherited houses sell without this form, where the seller tells the buyer what they know about the condition of the house, and others do not.

Texas law requires the person selling a house to provide it, with some exceptions. One of them is a sale by the executor or administrator while they are administering the estate. In that case the seller on the paperwork is the estate, which appears as "Estate of" followed by the name of the person who passed away, the executor signs, and that seller is not required to provide the form.

If the house has already passed to the heirs, for example through an affidavit of heirship, and they sell it in their own names, none of the exceptions covers them, so they do provide it, even if they never lived in the house. The form asks whether the seller lives in the house and, if not, how long it has been since they did, so the law already expects some sellers not to live there. You answer with what you know, and what you truly do not know you mark as unknown. If the buyer does not receive the form when they were supposed to, the buyer may have the right to terminate the contract, and in either case, a seller who knows about a major problem with the house has to tell the buyer.

So the path the attorney chooses at the beginning also changes this step, and it is worth knowing early which of the two cases is yours.

When is the right time to put the house on the market?

When you decide to sell, the first thing, and to me the most important, is to find a real estate professional you feel comfortable talking to, who coordinates with the title company and checks that the documents for the sale are ready, because every case is different.

I would not recommend putting a house on the market before the process of determining who the heirs are is finished. Some agents recommend listing it earlier, but as long as the paperwork is not ready, the house keeps adding days on market without being able to close, even if a very tempting offer comes in, and those days can weaken the seller's negotiating position when the real offer arrives.

What do I do with the house in the meantime?

The house still needs care, whether it is empty or not. The grass keeps growing, the house gets dirty, and you have to decide what to do with the furniture and belongings left inside. I recommend staying on top of the utility bills, because a service that stops working can damage the house, and in Texas, with this heat, a house without air conditioning deteriorates and becomes harder to show.

As real estate agents, we have a network of professionals we have already worked with, so we can recommend someone to clean the house or cut the grass. That takes some of the weight off having to deal with what belonged to someone you loved, on top of the weight of the loss.

And if, instead of selling, you decide to live in the house you inherited, the homestead exemption does not transfer to you automatically, so you need to apply for it with your county's appraisal district.

Real-life story

Over my career, I have walked clients through this kind of process more than once. Two of those times did not have a happy ending. I was representing the buyer, and we submitted strong offers, very tempting for the seller, which the seller was unable to accept because the probate process had not finished. Another time, also on the buyer's side, one of the two spouses selling the house passed away in the middle of the purchase. It was a very stressful process for everyone, and only with the cooperation of every party were we able to reach the closing table. What those experiences leave me with is the need to be prepared, because these things happen in real life, and the best thing you can do when they happen to you is surround yourself with professionals who are prepared, or willing to prepare, to walk with you through it. If you are on the seller's side, waiting until the paperwork is ready spares you from going through that.

How long does an affidavit of heirship take?

The law does not set a timeline, because it depends on how long it takes the family to find the witnesses and on whoever prepares it. Once it is recorded, it can take one or two business days to show up in the County Clerk's online search. When a house has been in the same family for generations, tracing who the heirs are can take 30 to 45 days, according to Texas REALTORS® magazine.

The decision to sell the house, and when, belongs to you and the other heirs. If it helps to know what the house is worth while the paperwork gets sorted out, you can write to me and I will prepare its market value for you, in English or in Spanish. On the Sell page you can see how I work with sellers.

Lliliam Foster is a bilingual REALTOR® with Compass serving Spring, The Woodlands, Conroe, Magnolia, Tomball, Cypress, Humble/Atascocita, North Houston/Aldine and the 1960 corridor. Information current as of October 2026.

Lliliam Foster, REALTOR® — Compass. This information is general in nature and does not constitute legal or financial advice. Compass is a licensed real estate brokerage in Texas.