Inherited property sale calculator: agent, auction or cash buyer
Almost every page you will find on selling an inherited house is published by somebody who wants to buy it. This one is not selling a route. Put in the three offers, the fees, the repairs and how long each one really takes, and it works out the net to the estate for all three, then tells you what a cash offer would have to be to match the best of them. Free, no sign-up, eleven currencies, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Arithmetic, not advice, and it names no country’s probate or tax rules. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is uploaded. Last updated 8 August 2026.
1. What the property costs the estate every month
This is the number the whole comparison turns on. Every month a route takes is this figure out of the estate, which is how a slower, higher offer becomes comparable with a faster, lower one.
2. Estate agent listing
The open-market route. Highest headline price, longest timeline, and the only one where the sale can fall through and start again.
3. Auction
A date and a binding contract. Usually a lower price, usually far fewer surprises, and no requirement to make the house pretty.
4. Cash buyer
Speed and certainty, bought with a discount. Many cash buyers pay the legal costs, which is why the fixed costs here start at zero.
5. Deductions that apply whichever route wins
The tax fields are optional and start switched off. This page has no idea what your rules are, so it asks for your figure and does nothing at all until both fields are filled in.
The three routes side by side
Everything below the line is the estate’s money. A route with a zero price is left out of the comparison.
| Line | Estate agent | Auction | Cash buyer |
|---|
How to compare an inherited house sale properly
The method is published everywhere and built almost nowhere. Work out the monthly cost of holding the property, then price each route including the time it takes.
Holding cost per month = insurance + property tax + utilities
+ maintenance and security
+ any mortgage or loan payment
For each route:
Selling fee = price x fee %
Gain = price - value at date of death - fee - fixed - repairs
Tax = Gain x your rate (only if you gave both figures)
Net = price - fee - fixed costs - repairs
- (holding cost per month x months)
- Tax - loan redeemed
Best route = the highest Net, not the highest priceWhy the headline price is the wrong number
Three offers on the same house are three different products. One is a price with a four-month wait, a commission, a repair bill and a chance of collapsing at week six. One is a price with a date attached. One is a lower price with a completion in a fortnight. Comparing the first number on each is like comparing a rent and a mortgage payment: the units are not the same until you convert time into money.
The one figure that decides everything
The monthly holding cost. If it is small, time is nearly free and the highest price usually wins by a distance. If it is large, and it is large whenever a mortgage is still running, then months become expensive and the fast route catches up quickly. The single most useful output on this page is delay it can absorb: how many extra months the winning route can take before it stops being the winner.
A worked example
The figures this page opens with. An ordinary house, no mortgage, three beneficiaries.
| Line | Estate agent | Auction | Cash buyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price achieved | €400,000 | €372,000 | €355,000 |
| Selling fee | €12,000 | €9,300 | €0 |
| Legal and fixed costs | €1,800 | €1,500 | €0 |
| Repairs and clearance | €9,500 | €1,500 | €0 |
| Months to completion | 5 | 3 | 1 |
| Holding cost | €3,000 | €1,800 | €600 |
| Net to the estate | €373,700 | €357,900 | €354,400 |
| Per beneficiary, three ways | €124,566.67 | €119,300 | €118,133.33 |
The agent route wins by €15,800, which is €5,266.67 each. More usefully, at €600 a month it could take another 26 months before the auction route caught it. On an ordinary house with no mortgage, time is close to free and the cash-buyer discount is simply a discount. For the cash offer to match the agent route it would have to be €374,300, which is 93.6% of the price the agent expects to achieve. Cash-buying companies do not offer 93.6%.
Now put a mortgage on it
Change one field. The house still carries a mortgage at €850 a month, so the holding cost becomes €1,450. The agent route now spends €7,250 on holding instead of €3,000, the auction €4,350, the cash buyer €1,450. The agent route still wins, and its lead over the auction falls to €14,100 while the delay it can absorb collapses from 26 months to under 10. Add a chain that breaks once and a relisting, and the two routes are level.
That is the whole argument between the estate agent and the cash buyer, and it turns out not to be an argument at all. It is a question about how much the property costs you to keep and how confident you are about the timeline.
Now switch the tax on
Say the value at the date of death was €340,000 and the gain is taxed at 20% after selling costs. The agent route shows a gain of €36,700 and pays €7,340. The auction shows €19,700 and pays €3,940. The cash buyer shows €15,000 and pays €3,000. Every route drops, but the highest price drops the most, and the agent’s lead over the auction narrows from €15,800 to €12,400. Tax rarely changes which route wins. It reliably makes the race closer, and on a marginal decision that can be the whole difference.
What each input means
- Insurance
- Unoccupied property cover, which is a different and dearer product than ordinary buildings insurance, and usually comes with conditions about inspections, heating and draining down the system. If you are still paying the deceased’s old premium, the number here is wrong and so, probably, is the cover.
- Property tax or council tax
- Whatever is charged on the property monthly. Empty homes attract a premium in a good many places and a temporary exemption in others, sometimes both in sequence. Check what applies rather than assuming the old bill continues.
- Utilities and standing charges
- An empty house with the heating on a frost setting still runs up standing charges on every meter. Small, certain, and easy to leave out of a comparison entirely.
- Maintenance, garden, security
- Grass cutting, gutter clearing, alarm monitoring, the neighbour who checks it, the odd repair. An empty property visibly deteriorates and a visibly empty property attracts the wrong attention.
- Mortgage or loan payment
- Any payment still leaving the estate every month against the property. Separate from the redemption figure in section 5, which is the lump paid off at completion. If a mortgage is running, this field usually decides the whole comparison.
- Price you expect to achieve
- Not the asking price, and not the number the agent used to win the instruction. Achieved prices sit below asking prices in most markets, so if you have no better information, take the valuation and shade it. Setting a route’s price to zero removes it from the comparison.
- Selling fee
- Commission as a percentage of the price, however it is dressed up. Agent commission varies enormously by country: low single figures in much of Europe and the UK, substantially more in the United States where the fee has customarily covered both sides. Use the figure in your own agreement, not a benchmark.
- Legal and fixed costs
- Conveyancing, searches, an auction legal pack, marketing, energy certificates, anything that does not scale with the price. Cash buyers often pay these, which is why the field starts at zero on that route and why it is worth confirming in writing.
- Repairs, clearance and preparation
- What you would spend to get the property to the condition the price assumes. Clearance is nearly always worth it. Cosmetic work on a probate sale often is not. The way to test it is to enter the repair spend with the higher price, then remove both and see which nets more.
- Months to completion
- From today until the money is in the estate account, including the time it takes to get the authority to sell. This is the number people are most optimistic about, and the one the comparison is most sensitive to. If you are unsure, run it twice.
- Value at the date of death and tax rate
- Both optional and both off by default, because tax on the gain works differently everywhere and this page refuses to guess. Give it both and it deducts selling costs from the gain before applying your rate. Give it one and it does nothing, which is the honest response to half a question.
What the arithmetic cannot price
Four things that belong in the decision and not in the calculator, because putting a number on them would be pretending.
Certainty
A cash sale that completes is worth more than a listing that might. Sales fall through, chains collapse, surveys turn up damp, and each restart costs months of holding cost and another round of the same work. The honest way to price it here is to run the agent route twice: once with your expected timeline and once with three months added, and see whether the winner changes. If it does, the certainty is worth buying.
The executor’s own time
Four months of viewings, chasing, questions from beneficiaries and phone calls with a conveyancer is real work, and it is unpaid unless the estate is paying you. It is not in this calculator because you would have to put a rate on your own weekends, but it belongs in the decision.
What the family wants
Somebody usually wants to keep the house, or wants it sold to a family rather than to a developer, or cannot bear the idea of an auction. That is not irrational and it is not a number. What the table does is make the cost of the preference visible, so a choice can be made with the price known rather than discovered afterwards.
Your local rules
Whether you can market before the authority to sell is granted, whether all the beneficiaries have to agree, whether a court has to approve the price, how the gain is taxed and what may be deducted from it: all local, all different, none of it in here. This page does the arithmetic. Somebody where the estate is being administered has to do the rest.
Questions executors ask about selling an inherited property
Should I sell an inherited house to a cash buyer?
Sometimes, and the way to find out is to price the alternative properly rather than to argue about it. A cash offer is worth the discount when the property is genuinely hard to sell, when it is costing the estate real money every month, when a mortgage is still running against it, or when the certainty of a date matters more than the last few percent. It is not worth the discount on an ordinary house in an ordinary market, because a modest carrying cost takes years to eat a 10% price gap. The calculator on this page exists to show which of those two situations you are in.
How much less do cash buyers pay for a property?
Cash-buying companies typically offer well below the open-market figure, and the gap is the price of speed and certainty rather than a valuation. Rather than argue about the percentage, put their actual offer into this calculator against your actual asking price and see what the difference is after fees, repairs and the months of holding cost each route really involves. The output that settles it is the one showing what a cash offer would have to be to match the best alternative.
What does it cost to hold an inherited property?
More than people expect and less than cash buyers imply. Unoccupied property insurance, which is a specialist product and dearer than ordinary cover, property taxes or council tax that may carry an empty-property premium, standing charges on utilities, garden and general maintenance, and security. Add any mortgage or loan payment still running. On an ordinary house with no mortgage, the total is often a few hundred a month. With a mortgage still being paid, it can be several times that, and the calculation changes completely.
Is an auction better than an estate agent for a probate property?
An auction buys you a date and a binding contract, which is worth a great deal to an executor. It usually costs a slice of the price and it works best on property that is hard to value, hard to mortgage, tenanted, or in poor condition. On a straightforward house in a decent market an agent listing generally nets more. Put both in the calculator with honest prices and honest timelines and the answer is normally clear, because the two routes are rarely close once the numbers are on paper.
Do I need to clear and repair the house before selling?
Clearance is nearly always worth it because an empty, clean house sells faster and photographs better. Repairs are a judgement: kitchens and bathrooms rarely return what they cost on a probate sale, while damp, roof and safety issues do, because they are the things that frighten a buyer’s surveyor and collapse a sale at week six. Put the repair spend into the calculator with the price you think it buys, then take it out and lower the price. The comparison usually decides it.
How long does it take to sell an inherited property?
Longer than an ordinary sale, because the authority to sell usually has to be in place first and that alone can take months. After that, an agent sale runs on the same timetable as any other, an auction is fixed to a date perhaps six to ten weeks out with completion shortly after, and a cash buyer can move in weeks. The honest way to use this page is to put in the timeline you actually expect, not the one you were promised.
Can an executor sell before the estate is settled?
In most systems the executor needs the court or registry authority in hand before a sale can complete, and marketing can often start earlier. Whether the property passed directly to the beneficiaries or is held by the estate, whether all the beneficiaries have to agree, and whether a court has to approve the price, all differ by jurisdiction and sometimes by the wording of the will. This page does not know any of that. Ask locally before you accept an offer.
Is there tax on selling an inherited property?
Frequently there is tax on the gain between the value at the date of death and the sale price, and the rate, the allowances and the deductible costs are all local. That is why this calculator asks for the date-of-death value and a rate rather than offering you either. Turn it on and it does something useful: because a higher sale price produces a larger gain, tax narrows the gap between the routes, which sometimes matters more than the headline price does.
How do I compare offers fairly when the timelines are different?
Convert time into money. Every month a route takes costs the estate a known amount in insurance, tax, utilities, maintenance and any loan payment, so a route that takes four months longer is not simply slower, it is a specific number of currency units worse. That is the whole method this page uses, and it is what makes a slower and higher offer comparable with a faster and lower one.
What if the beneficiaries disagree about the route?
Show them the arithmetic before you show them your preference. Most disagreements about selling a family property are not really about money, but a table of three routes with a net figure and a per-beneficiary figure at the bottom turns an argument about sentiment into a discussion about a number, which is a far easier conversation to have. Print it, send it, and let people react to it in their own time.
Does an empty inherited property need different insurance?
Almost always. Ordinary buildings cover is commonly restricted once a property has been unoccupied for around thirty days, and an unoccupied-property policy is the usual fix. It costs more, sometimes considerably more, and it comes with conditions about inspections, heating and draining down. Tell the insurer the situation in writing rather than hoping. An uninsured loss on an empty house is the one mistake on this page that no comparison can rescue.
Is anything I type saved or uploaded?
No. The whole calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored or logged, and there is no account. Close the tab and the numbers are gone, which is why there is a start over button and no save button.
The house is one line in the estate account
This page answers the sale question and forgets it when you close the tab. That is deliberate, and it stays free. What it cannot do is hold the rest of the administration: the asset and debt schedules the property sits inside, every movement of money through the estate account with a running balance, the beneficiary register, and the final account that has to reconcile before you can close. The Estate Executor Organizer (€12, Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice) is the workbook for that, with a task list and a document tracker alongside it. One payment, no subscription, no account.
See what is in the organizer