Establish who has the legal authority to sign first, because that is the executor or administrator holding letters from the court, the successor trustee, or every heir once title has been distributed, and the rest of it (valuation, clearing the house, disclosure, pricing) runs like any other sale with the date-of-death value as the tax basis.
Selling an inherited house is a normal sale wrapped in an authority problem. Everything a listing needs, a price, photographs, a disclosure, a signature on the deed, requires someone with the legal power to provide it, and until that is settled nothing else can start. Sort the authority, then work the sale.
Who can sign, and how you prove it
Four situations, and they are not interchangeable. If the house passed by trust, the successor trustee signs and shows a certification of trust and the death certificate. If it passed by a deed upon death or by survivorship, the beneficiary or the survivor records an affidavit of death and then signs as owner. If the estate is in probate, the personal representative signs and the proof is the letters testamentary or letters of administration the court issued, which escrow will want a certified copy of. If probate has already closed and the house was distributed to several heirs, every one of them signs, including the ones who live elsewhere and the ones who are not speaking to each other.
Start here because the answer changes the timeline by months. It is also the point at which a title company will tell you what they need, and it is cheaper to hear that in week one than in escrow.
The order of operations
Open the estate if it needs opening, or record the affidavit if it does not. Then order a date-of-death appraisal, which fixes the tax basis and doubles as a sanity check on the list price. Then pull a title search: old seconds nobody released, a contractor's lien, an unrecorded easement, and the reverse mortgage the family did not know about all show up here, and every one of them takes weeks to clear. Then deal with the contents, because a house full of forty years of belongings cannot be photographed.
Only then does it become a listing: repairs or a decision not to repair, photographs, price, market. A house sold out of an estate is usually sold in its condition, and buyers price that in. The choice worth making deliberately is whether to do the small cosmetic work (paint, carpet, hauling, landscaping) that changes the photographs, or to price for the condition and say so.
The tax on the sale is usually small, and that surprises people
The basis is the fair market value at the date of death under IRC 1014, not what the deceased paid. Gain is measured from that number, so a house sold within a year of the death typically produces a small gain or a small loss after selling costs, no matter how much it appreciated over the owner's lifetime.
If the estate sells the house while it is still an estate asset, the sale is reported on the estate's income tax return and the gain or loss passes through to the beneficiaries when the estate distributes. If the heirs sell after distribution, each reports their share. A loss on a house held as an investment rather than lived in can be deductible; a loss on a house an heir moved into generally is not. IRS Publication 559 covers the estate's side and a tax preparer covers yours, which is not the same as reading a blog about it.
Disclosure when you never lived in the house
This is the part inherited-house sellers get wrong, in both directions. You cannot disclose defects you do not know about, and no state requires an inspection you did not order. Nevada's rule says exactly that: NRS 113.140 provides that disclosure of an unknown defect is not required and that the form is not a warranty. What you cannot do is stay silent about what you do know, and an heir who grew up in the house knows about the slab, the roof and the flood in the back bedroom.
Nevada's Seller's Real Property Disclosure form is normally required at least ten days before conveyance under NRS 113.130, and subsection 2 exempts a handful of transfers, including a sale by a fiduciary such as a personal representative or trustee who takes title solely to facilitate the sale for a deceased or incapacitated person. Read that exemption narrowly rather than assuming it covers you: an heir who owns the house outright after distribution is a seller like any other. The disclosure guide walks the form line by line, and it is worth completing even where an exemption is available, since a buyer who is told nothing is a buyer who sues later.
Clearing the house, and what the estate spends to get to closing
The contents are their own project. The usual sequence is family takes what they want first with a written list to stop the arguments, then an estate sale company prices and sells the rest over a weekend, then a donation pickup, then a junk hauler for the remainder. Some estate sale companies will buy the leftovers outright rather than leave you with them.
The estate carries everything until closing: taxes, insurance at the vacant rate, dues, utilities, yard care, and the cost of whatever repairs get made. Those come out of estate funds, and the personal representative should be documenting them, because heirs ask. Run the net through the home sale calculator with the commission, the title and escrow charges, the transfer tax and the payoff of any lien, so the number everyone is arguing over is the number that actually reaches the family.
Questions people ask
Can you sell an inherited house before probate is finished?
Usually yes, with the personal representative selling on the court's authority rather than waiting for distribution, and many estates do exactly that because a house is easier to divide as cash. The sale is either confirmed at a hearing or completed on notice to the heirs, depending on the authority granted.
Do all the siblings have to agree to sell an inherited house?
Once title has been distributed, yes, every owner has to sign the deed. Before distribution the personal representative can sell without unanimous agreement, subject to notice and the court. A holdout after distribution leaves the others with a buyout or a partition action.
Should you fix up an inherited house before selling it?
Do the cheap cosmetic work that changes the photographs and skip anything needing a permit or a second trade. Estates rarely recover a full renovation, and a dated house priced for its condition sells to the buyers who want that, while a half-finished project sells to nobody.