How do I sell land I inherited?

Start at the date of death and look at the county land records the next morning. Nothing in them has changed. The last recorded deed still names the person who died as the owner, no one has been appointed to act for the estate, and nothing on file yet says who holds the land now.

That gap is what the next entries in the record fill. Virginia allows an estate of inheritance or freehold in land to be conveyed only by deed or will. Carroll County's circuit court clerk adds that no one has authority to act as an executor or administrator until appointed and formally qualified.

The first document worth pulling is the deed that put the land in the decedent's name, because it shows how the land was held. Where two or more people held it as joint tenants, a deceased joint tenant's share passes to heirs, by will or to the personal representative as if the owners were tenants in common, unless the instrument manifestly shows an intent that the survivors take it. What tenancy in common means for co-owners is on its own page. A deed that gave the decedent only a life estate raises a different question again, one for the attorney.

When the will or the heirship papers are on record, the question changes from who owns the land to who has to agree before it sells.

When co-owners cannot agree, Virginia lets tenants in common, joint tenants, executors with a power to sell and coparceners compel partition; the order a court follows, starting with division in kind, is set out in the glossary entry on tenancy in common.

Who signs the deed, and in what shares, is the attorney's answer. How a Virginia deed passes land and what its warranty promises is laid out in what a Virginia deed does. What the land may bring is a separate question, and a free valuation of inherited land is where that one starts.

By the time a buyer is found, three practical items are left: the tax bill, the parcel record and the buyer's examination of title.

Taxes can fall behind while an estate is unsettled. What heirs can do when land reaches a tax sale suit, and how a delinquent tax lien and a recorded lien are handled when land sells, is set out in selling land with a lien or back taxes.

The county's assessment record may still show the decedent until an heirship affidavit or a deed moves it, and the tax map or parcel number the county assigns, which some forms call a GPIN, is how the parcel is found in the record. The buyer's title search then reads the chain through the death: the recorded will or the list of heirs, and the deed that conveys the land out of the estate. Gains on the sale are a separate matter, starting with stepped-up basis on inherited land and ending with a tax professional.