What to know before selling, renting or keeping it

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Money 101 newsletter with Sharon Epperson, an eight-week financial education series with special monthly editions. Sign up to receive the newsletters, straight to your inbox. They’re also available in Spanish.

When Ashton and Adison Lawrence inherited their grandmother’s South Carolina home earlier this summer, the brothers knew they weren’t just inheriting a piece of real estate.

They were inheriting a major financial responsibility.

“You’re dealing with both the grief but also the management and some decision-making on what you’d like to do with the property,” said Adison, 34, a senior manager at an advertising sales and media business in Raleigh, North Carolina.

When siblings inherit a home together, they often have to decide whether to sell, rent or keep it while covering taxes, insurance, maintenance and repairs.

“With this being so recent, we actually haven’t had a final decision on what we want to do with it — whether it’s selling it, whether it’s trying to use it as a rental property,” said Ashton, 39, a certified financial planner and senior wealth advisor at Mariner in Greenville, South Carolina. “But [we’re] keeping that communication open for how we want to proceed.”

Tens of trillions of dollars are expected to change hands between generations in the next couple of decades in what is known as the great wealth transfer, as baby boomers and members of the silent generation pass away and leave their homes and other assets to their heirs.

Estimates suggest that trillions of dollars will flow to heirs during that time.

In an analysis published in July, Visa said baby boomers will leave $36 trillion to younger generations over the next 20 years. Cerulli Associates, a consulting and market research firm, estimates that older generations will leave a much larger sum — more than $100 trillion — to heirs through 2048.

The gap in these estimates is due in large part to the scope of the generations leaving and receiving assets. The Visa report focused only on baby boomers and their heirs, whereas Cerulli includes all generations. Also, Visa’s chief economist Wayne Best told CNBC that his firm’s analysis excluded the wealth of the wealthiest 1%, estimated at $28 trillion.

Rising home values have made real estate an increasingly important part of that wealth shift.

Inherited homes accounted for a record 8.85% of all U.S. single-family residential and rural property transfers in 2025, according to data shared with CNBC from real estate data provider Cotality.

For many families, the home is the largest asset in an estate and often carries the greatest emotional weight, according to financial advisors. Without clear instructions, enough cash and honest conversations, heirs can inherit difficult decisions and unexpected bills along with the memories, they said.

“It is [like] managing a business,” said Lazetta Rainey Braxton, a certified financial planner and member of the CNBC Financial Advisor Council. “You have to be present to know what the home needs, and you have to have the cash flow to take care of it.”

Siblings inheriting property together may have fundamentally different goals. One may want to keep the home as a rental to help meet cash-flow needs, while another may prefer a lump-sum payment from the sale.

Even with his professional expertise and years of conversations with his grandmother about her wishes, Ashton, the executor of her estate, said deciding what to do with the house isn’t simply a financial calculation.

“There’s two answers,” he said. “One, the mathematical, the logical type of approach, and then there’s the emotional piece.”

“Regardless of whatever the house might yield to us personally, there’s an emotional attachment to the actual property, and that’ll be something we weigh along with the financial pieces,” he said.

Braxton, founder and managing principal of The Real Wealth Coterie, said she has seen firsthand how those decisions can become complicated.

After her grandparents died, her father and his three siblings inherited the family home. Her father hoped to buy out his siblings, who lived in different parts of the country and weren’t interested in keeping the property. But family members couldn’t reach a decision quickly enough.

“My dad had always expressed that he wanted to buy out the siblings,” she said. “That conversation took some time. And the time that it took, we actually had to have the home demolished.”

The story illustrates a reality many heirs don’t anticipate: The costs of owning a home don’t stop when the owner dies. Property taxes, insurance, maintenance and repairs continue while siblings work through decisions that can take months — or even years.

“The home is an asset, and a lot of people want to put emotional ties to it,” Braxton said. “It’s a large asset that needs a conversation around it.”

Another key financial consideration is when to sell the home.

Under federal tax law, when a homeowner dies, the inherited home’s cost basis resets to fair market value on the date of death. Cost basis is the property’s value for tax purposes — the starting point used to calculate a taxable gain or loss when the property is sold.

Estate planning attorneys typically advise heirs to have the home appraised promptly after the owner’s passing. Any appreciation after the date of death is subject to capital gains tax, which is the tax owed on profits from a financial asset, such as real estate or stocks.

Families that sell near fair market value can minimize capital gains tax, advisors say.

Financial advisors say there’s no universal answer to whether siblings should sell, rent or keep an inherited home.

Instead, they recommend discussing expectations with the property owner well before they die and a home becomes part of an estate. Creating a decision-making process among siblings or close family members is also a good idea.

For clients who want to preserve family harmony, Braxton often advises the property owner to consult with an estate planning attorney to create appropriate documents, such as a will and/or a trust, to avoid the public probate court process. Transferring the property’s title to a trust through a properly prepared and recorded deed is another critical step, estate planning attorneys say.

“If your assets are not titled in the name of the trust, the trust isn’t worth the paper it’s written on,” said Wayne Hassay, an attorney and managing partner at Maguire Schneider Hassay in Columbus, Ohio. “You want that house in the trust so that that house passes outside of probate, and pursuant to the terms and conditions that you decided.”

Braxton also recommends building a timeline into the estate plan.

“Have a clause that says if we haven’t decided in six months or a year, then that gives the trustee the right to sell the property,” she said, adding that delaying decision-making could postpone necessary maintenance and negatively impact the property’s value.

“Sometimes you kind of have to be forced to make a decision,” she said, “and having the conversation early helps.”

“Competing interests can strain even close relationships,” said Mitchell Kraus, a CFP and co-founder of Capital Intelligence Associates in Santa Monica, California. “The single best piece of advice I give families is to have this conversation before the parents pass away.”

Ashton Lawrence offers that advice to clients as well.

He said he now knows from experience this valuable lesson: The most important conversations about the family home need to happen before anyone inherits it. 

SIGN UP: Money 101 is an eight-week learning course on financial freedom, delivered weekly to your inbox. Sign up here. It is also available in Spanish.