Last updated: June 2026 | By Drew Heberer
A good number of the people I talk to here in the Midwest end up in the same strange spot. A parent or a relative passes, and the house they leave behind is not down the street, it is in California. Usually San Diego, Los Angeles, or somewhere up in the Bay Area. And now you are trying to deal with a property that is probably worth more than your own home, two time zones away, that you have maybe set foot in twice in your life.
I have helped enough families through this, on both coasts, that I want to lay out the order I would tackle it in if it were me. None of this is legal or tax advice, every estate is its own animal, and you should absolutely talk to your own attorney and CPA. But this is the lay of the land so you are not starting from zero.
First, find out whether it is in a trust or has to go through probate
This one decides your entire timeline, so figure it out before you plan anything else.
If the home was placed in a living trust, you can usually sell it fairly quickly, because the trust names who has authority to act and you skip the court process. If it was not, the estate likely has to go through probate, which is the court supervised process of settling what the person left behind. California probate is not fast. It commonly runs somewhere from nine months to well over a year, and in most cases you cannot deliver clean title to a buyer until the court signs off.
So step one is a call to a California estate attorney to tell you which bucket you are in. Everything else flows from that answer, and people waste months making decisions before they know it.
Second, understand the tax side, because it is usually friendlier than you fear
Most people assume an inherited house means a giant tax bill. Usually it is the opposite.
When you inherit a home you typically get what is called a stepped up basis. In plain terms, your cost basis resets to roughly what the home was worth on the date you inherited it, not what the original owner paid for it decades ago. So if you turn around and sell near that value, the taxable capital gain can be quite small, even on a house that appreciated for forty years. That is a big deal and a lot of heirs do not realize they have it.
The wrinkle in California is Prop 19. It changed how the low property tax basis carries over to heirs. The short version is that the old trick of keeping a parent’s locked in, decades old property tax bill is much harder now unless you actually move into the home as your primary residence, and even then there are caps. At California assessed values, that can be the difference between a property tax bill you can shrug off and one that quietly eats you every month you hold the place. Fifteen minutes with a CPA before you decide to keep it is fifteen minutes very well spent.
Third, the part that actually wears people down
Here is the one nobody warns you about. Most inherited homes are full of a lifetime of belongings and need real work, and you cannot manage that from 1,800 miles away without it taking over your life.
It turns into flights you cannot afford the time for, contractors you have no way to supervise, a dumpster you are renting over the phone from another state, and a sibling group text that gets tense around week three. I have watched people spend a year and several thousand dollars getting a house ready to list, only to net barely more than they would have in the first month, once you count the holding costs and the plane tickets and the stress.
That exact problem is a big reason I put a team in San Diego in the first place. If the property is out there, they can walk it in person, take it as is so you are not cleaning it out or fixing a single thing, and close remotely so you never have to get on a plane. You keep whatever belongings you want and leave the rest in the house, and they handle the cleanout.
And if there are several siblings or heirs who do not all agree on what to do, a clean cash sale is often the simplest path through it. It turns a house nobody can split into money everyone can divide, on a clear date, without anyone having to play general contractor from another time zone. You can reach them and see how it works at San Diego Cash Home Offer.
The order I would actually go in
If I inherited a California house tomorrow from here in Iowa, this is the sequence.
Call a California estate attorney and find out trust or probate. Get a CPA on the phone about stepped up basis and what Prop 19 means for your specific situation. Get a real sense of the home’s condition and what it is worth as is versus fixed up, which you can do without flying out by having someone local walk it. Then decide, with actual numbers in front of you, whether it makes more sense to fix and list it, or to sell it as is for cash and be done.
For a lot of out of state heirs, once they see the real math on holding costs, repairs, travel, and time, the as is cash route wins, not because it is the highest sticker number, but because it is the highest number that does not cost them a year of their life.
If you are staring at an inherited California house right now wondering where to even start, start with that list. And if you want a local team out there to walk it and give you a straight cash number with no pressure, that is what we do at sandiegocashhomeoffer.com.