Probate and Estate Sales
Court and trustee timelines, the property cleared and prepared, and your attorney kept in the loop throughout.
The Lakeshore Estate Nobody Knows How to Value
This is the work I most want, and there is a specific reason.
A family cottage that has been in the same hands for forty years is the hardest property in this market to value. The house is often the least of it. What it is worth is decided by the water. The frontage, the access, what a comparable stretch has actually sold for. That is exactly what a general estate valuation gets wrong.
Families routinely find out later that the number they worked from was a house valuation with a view attached. On this water that gap is not small.
So if you are settling an estate that includes a place on a lake, on the river, or on Lake Michigan, the valuation is the part to get right first, and it is the part I can actually help with.
Where would you like to start?
How These Sales Run
Court and trustee timelines set the pace. What can happen when is usually not up to any of us, and the sale plan is built around those dates rather than around a normal listing calendar.
Clearing and preparing the property, which on a long-held family place is a real project and often an emotional one. It also affects the number, so it is worth planning rather than rushing.
Working alongside the attorney rather than around them. I do not give legal advice and I will not guess at what an order permits.
And the disclosure question that comes up every time: an executor or trustee who never lived in the property knows less about it than a normal seller, and there are specific rules about that. Your attorney will tell you where you stand; what I will do is make sure the question is asked early.
In their words
What working with me is like
Going with Tamara as our realtor was a fantastic decision! She is honest, calm, professional, and a fantastic listener. I would most definitely recommend her to anyone!
Tamera was the best ever! Give that woman a raise!
Getting Everybody on the Same Page, and Keeping Them There
When several heirs are involved, the hard part is almost never the property. It is that four people are making one decision with four different sets of information.
Your attorney and I sit at the top of this. We are the first branch of the tree, where the information actually lives, and everything trickles down from there. If it is clear and complete at the top, it stays clear by the time it reaches the person who was not on the call. If it is vague at the top, it arrives at the bottom as rumor, and that is where families fall out.
So a large part of my job here is educating rather than selling. One sibling often arrives with an expectation that is not realistic and another with one that is, and neither of them is being difficult. They have simply been told different things, or nothing. Putting the same written picture in front of all of them, what the property is, what it is worth and why, and what each route would actually involve, settles most of that before it becomes a disagreement.
And it does not stop once a number is agreed. It matters most from the first offer onward, because that is when the decisions get real and the deadlines start binding. Every one of them has to reach everybody, not just whoever answers the phone first.
Several Signatures, and the Deadlines Do Not Wait
The thing that catches families out is how many points in a sale need every heir to sign rather than just the executor.
Offers, counters, addenda, disclosures, inspection responses and the closing paperwork can all land on a clock. When signers live in three states and one of them travels for work, a document that needs four signatures in forty-eight hours is a genuine logistical problem rather than a formality.
That is the part I run as a system rather than a scramble. Everybody knows in advance who signs what, how it will reach them, and roughly when to expect it, so a deadline is met because it was planned for rather than because somebody chased four people on a Friday afternoon.
Done properly it is invisible. Done badly it is how a good offer falls apart over a signature nobody could get in time.
Where the Family Is Not Local
Often nobody involved lives here any more. The place is three hours away or three states away, and somebody has to go and look at it, deal with what is in it, and decide what is worth doing before it sells.
That is the same job I do for buyers who cannot drive up. Go and read the property honestly, then report back. Photographs of a forty-year-old cottage do not tell you what you need to decide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does a lakeshore estate need a different valuation?
Because the water decides most of the value, and a general estate valuation tends to value the house and treat the water as a view. Frontage, access and what a comparable stretch actually sold for are what matter, and those are local questions. Families find out about that gap later, when it is expensive.
Nobody in the family lives in Michigan any more.
That is common and it is workable. Somebody has to go and look at the property honestly, deal with what is in it, and say what is worth doing before it sells. That is the same thing I do for buyers who cannot drive up: go and read it, then report back properly.
Do you give legal advice on probate?
No. Court timelines, what an order permits, and what an executor or trustee must disclose are all questions for the estate's attorney. I work alongside them and make sure the questions get asked early rather than discovered mid-sale.
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