Selling a property in a deceased estate

If you are reading this you are probably an executor, or an heir waiting on one, and the process has already taken longer than anyone told you it would. Here is the honest shape of it.

Nobody can sell the property until an executor is appointed

The estate must be reported to the Master of the High Court within fourteen days of death. For estates over R250 000 the Master issues Letters of Executorship; below that threshold, Letters of Authority under a simpler process.

Until those letters are issued, no one has authority to sell. Not the surviving spouse, not the heirs, not the family member who has been paying the rates. This is the step that most often takes months rather than weeks, and it is worth pushing on hard, because everything else queues behind it.

For properties in the northern suburbs of Cape Town, the estate is administered through the Master’s Office of the Western Cape High Court.

What the executor can and cannot do

Once appointed, the executor has authority to deal with the estate’s assets, including selling the property. In practice a few things constrain that:

• If the will directs that the property go to a specific heir, the executor cannot simply sell it over that heir’s objection.
• Where heirs are inheriting the property jointly, the executor will normally want their written consent to a sale, and any competent conveyancer will ask for it.
• Where a minor is an heir, the Master’s consent is required, and that adds time.
• The executor must be able to justify the price as reasonable. This is the practical reason a proper written valuation matters more in an estate sale than in an ordinary one.

Why the Liquidation and Distribution account controls the timeline

The executor must lodge a Liquidation and Distribution account with the Master, normally within six months of appointment. Once accepted, the account lies open for public inspection for twenty-one days so that any objection can be raised.

Transfer of the property cannot be registered until that process has run and the Master is satisfied. A sale can be concluded before then — an Offer to Purchase can be signed and accepted — but the conveyancer cannot lodge for registration until the estate is in order.

This is worth explaining to a buyer up front. An estate sale is not slower because anyone is being difficult; it is slower because it has a statutory process bolted onto the front of it. Buyers who understand that stay in the deal. Buyers who are told it will be "the usual three months" tend not to.

A realistic timeline

Rates, levies and the cost of waiting

The estate remains liable for rates, levies, insurance and maintenance throughout. On a R2 500 000 home that can quietly run to R4 000 to R6 000 a month, and over an eighteen-month administration it becomes a real number — often more than the difference the family was arguing about on price.

An empty property also deteriorates and attracts attention. If the administration is going to be long, it is worth deciding early whether to let it in the interim, and taking advice on how a lease affects the eventual sale.

Capital gains tax in an estate

Death is treated as a disposal for capital gains tax purposes, at market value on the date of death. Two things soften it: the deceased is entitled to a R300 000 annual exclusion in the year of death rather than the usual R40 000, and if the property was the deceased’s primary residence the primary residence exclusion applies.

Where the property is then sold by the estate for more than its date-of-death value, the estate can face a further gain on that increase. This is genuinely a question for the estate’s accountant rather than for an agent — but it is worth raising early, because it occasionally changes whether the family sells or transfers to an heir first.

What actually helps

1. Push on the Master’s appointment. It is the longest delay and the one most responsive to being chased.
2. Get a proper written valuation early. It protects the executor, settles arguments between heirs, and supports the price.
3. Get the compliance certificates done while you wait. There is dead time; use it.
4. Agree between the heirs, in writing, what price is acceptable before the property goes to market.
5. Tell buyers the truth about the timeline in the listing itself. It filters out the ones who will pull out in month four.