Full authority or limited. Confirmation or no hearing. AB 2016 or full administration. Those decisions get made in the first sixty days, and they are worth more than anything that happens at the closing table. Here is the whole map, plainly.
If you are reading this, someone in your family has died and there is a house. Maybe the court has already appointed you. Maybe you have not filed anything yet and you are trying to understand what you just inherited. Either way, the question underneath every other question is usually the same one: can I sell it, and when?
The short answer is yes, almost always. Probate is a process, not a padlock. What changes is who signs, how much oversight the court keeps, and how long it takes. Those three things are decided very early — often in the first filing — and they are the difference between a sale that closes in 45 days and a sale that drags for eight months and loses a buyer along the way.
I have sold probate property in Los Angeles for years, and I have also sat on the family side of an estate. I know what it feels like to be handed a building, a stack of paperwork, and a phone that will not stop ringing with people who want to buy it cheap.
California's Independent Administration of Estates Act — everyone calls it the IAEA — is what lets an executor or administrator handle estate business without asking a judge for permission at every step. When the petition is filed, the estate is granted either full authority or limited authority. This single line on the Letters is the most important fact about your sale.
With full authority, you can list the property, accept an offer, and close much like an ordinary sale. You still have to serve a Notice of Proposed Action on the heirs and beneficiaries, generally giving them 15 days to object. If nobody objects, you close. No hearing. No overbid. No courtroom.
With limited authority, the sale must be confirmed by the court. You get a hearing date, the sale is published, and on the day of the hearing the property is open to overbid in open court. That process is not a disaster — sometimes it produces a higher price — but it is slower, it is public, and it scares off a certain kind of buyer who will not wait 30 to 45 days for a hearing with no guarantee they will win.
This is the highest-leverage thing that happens in a probate sale, and it happens before a real estate agent is usually even in the room. If the estate's circumstances allow it, having your attorney request full authority at filing can save you months and thousands of dollars. If you are already holding limited authority Letters, ask your attorney whether the estate can petition for full authority. It is often possible.
This is the change most families in South Los Angeles have not heard about, and it matters enormously here.
California's small-estate procedures used to cap out around $184,500 — a number that made them useless for almost any home in Los Angeles. Assembly Bill 2016, effective April 1, 2025, created a separate, much higher threshold for a decedent's primary residence: up to $750,000 in value can move through a streamlined petition rather than a full probate administration.
Translated: a modest house in Hyde Park, Westmont, or parts of Inglewood that would have needed a full probate two years ago may now qualify for a far shorter, far cheaper court process. The determination depends on the date of death, how title was held, what else is in the estate, and a formal valuation. That is an attorney's call, not mine. But it is worth asking the question before anyone signs you up for an 12-month administration.
The families who lose money in probate rarely lose it at the closing table. They lose it in the first 60 days, by picking the slowest path available and not knowing there was a faster one.
If your sale needs confirmation, here is what actually happens. You accept an offer. Your attorney files a petition and gets a hearing date, usually four to six weeks out. The sale is published in a newspaper of general circulation. On the hearing date, anyone qualified may show up and bid.
The first overbid has to clear a statutory minimum — traditionally computed as the accepted price plus 10% of the first $10,000 plus 5% of the balance. So on a $600,000 accepted offer, the first overbid lands around $630,500. After that, the judge sets the increments and it runs like an auction.
Two practical consequences. First, your original buyer must be prepared to lose, so their deposit and their patience both have to be real. Second, a probate sale with confirmation should be marketed to the widest possible pool — including investors who understand the process — because the overbid pool is where the upside lives.
Since Proposition 19 took effect in February 2021, the parent-to-child property tax exclusion is far narrower than it used to be. In broad terms, the child must make the home their principal residence and file within the required window, and even then the exclusion is capped — value above the cap gets reassessed. The old strategy of inheriting a rental at Mom's 1978 tax basis and keeping it that way is, for most families, gone.
What that means practically: if nobody in the family is going to live in the house, the carrying cost after reassessment may be dramatically higher than what the estate has been paying. Run that number before you decide to hold. I have watched families keep a property out of loyalty and then bleed on it for three years. Loyalty is right. Bleeding is optional.
Because I am not learning on your file. I have handled probate and trust sales across Los Angeles, I hold the Certified Probate Specialist and Senior Real Estate Specialist designations, and I work alongside probate attorneys every week — I can tell you who is good and who is slow.
And because of what my own family went through. My mother, Lucretia Clark, bought a building on Crenshaw Boulevard in 1995 with money my father put up. When she passed in 2015, I inherited a property, a partner who had walked away from it, and no roadmap. It took me six years to buy out that partner and gain full control. That building is now a 48-unit development called The Clark on 54th. I chose to build instead of sell, and the Los Angeles Times wrote about why.
I tell you that not to sell you a story but so you know: when I say do not let anyone rush you into signing, I am not reciting a script.
Yes. In almost every case the property can be sold during probate. What changes is the process. With full authority under the Independent Administration of Estates Act, the personal representative can accept an offer and close after serving a Notice of Proposed Action on the heirs, generally a 15-day window. With limited authority, the sale must be confirmed at a court hearing where the property is open to overbid.
With full authority, the escrow itself runs close to a normal sale — roughly 30 to 45 days once you have an accepted offer, assuming the Letters are already issued. With limited authority, add four to six weeks for the confirmation hearing to be set and published. The longer variable is usually how quickly the petition is filed and Letters are issued at the front end, which can take several weeks to a few months in Los Angeles County.
Effective April 1, 2025, AB 2016 created a streamlined court procedure for a decedent's primary residence valued up to $750,000, replacing the far lower small-estate limit of roughly $184,500 that made the old procedure useless for California real estate. Many modest Los Angeles homes that would have required full probate administration may now qualify for a much shorter, cheaper process. Whether a specific estate qualifies depends on date of death, how title was held, and a formal valuation — ask a probate attorney before committing to a full administration.
The first overbid must exceed the accepted offer by a statutory minimum, traditionally calculated as ten percent of the first ten thousand dollars plus five percent of the balance. On a six hundred thousand dollar accepted offer, that puts the first overbid near $630,500. After the opening overbid, the judge sets the bidding increments.
You need an attorney. A real estate broker markets and sells the property and manages the escrow; the attorney files the petition, obtains the Letters, serves notices, and handles the confirmation. Trying to do a probate sale without counsel is how estates end up with defective title and a sale that unwinds. I keep a working list of Los Angeles probate attorneys and will make an introduction at no cost.
Run the number before you decide emotionally. Since Proposition 19 took effect in 2021, the parent-to-child property tax exclusion generally requires the child to make the home their principal residence and is capped, so an inherited rental usually gets reassessed at current market value. If nobody is moving in, the carrying cost after reassessment can be far higher than what the estate has been paying. Sometimes holding is exactly right. It should be a decision, not a default.
No. I will give you a written valuation with named comparable sales and my honest read on timing at no cost and with no listing agreement attached. If the right answer is to wait, or to petition for full authority first, I will tell you that.
See what it could sell for, rent for, or become — and what a transfer means for your family's property tax. One business day. No obligation.