Step 1: Secure the house
Within the first days: make sure the property is locked and looks lived-in enough not to advertise vacancy — mail collected or forwarded, a timer on a light, the lawn kept up (Dania Beach enforces code on vacant properties, and fines don't care that you're grieving). Locate the important papers in the house if you can: the deed, the most recent tax bill, insurance documents, and any will. Photograph the condition of each room. If anything of value is inside, change the locks once the family agrees who holds keys.
Step 2: Keep the insurance valid
This is the step families miss. A homeowner's policy written for the deceased owner may not cover a vacant house for long — many policies limit or drop coverage after 30–60 days of vacancy, and the named insured being deceased complicates claims. Call the insurance agent, tell them the situation plainly, and get the correct coverage in place (often a vacant-home or estate policy). In coastal Broward, an uninsured month during hurricane season is a risk no estate should carry. Keep paying the premiums from estate funds and keep receipts — they're reimbursable estate expenses.
Step 3: Find the will and open probate
Florida requires the original will to be deposited with the clerk of court in the county where the owner lived — Broward, for a Dania Beach owner — within ten days of learning of the death. Then probate: the court process that appoints a personal representative and legally moves title. Smaller estates may qualify for summary administration; larger or more complicated ones need formal administration. Until probate gives someone authority, nobody can legally sell the house — a fact that shapes every plan after this step. Our statewide guide to selling an inherited house and probate explains the timelines in plain English.
Step 4: Get the full picture of the property
While probate runs, assemble the facts: Is there a mortgage? A reverse mortgage has its own deadlines — notify the lender promptly. Are taxes current? Any code violations or open permits with the city (common on long-owned Dania Beach homes where work accumulated over decades)? What's the house honestly worth as-is, and what would it be worth renovated? Families fight over imagined numbers; real numbers end most arguments.
Step 5: Decide together — sell, rent, or divide
With title moving through probate and real numbers on the table, the heirs choose. One heir buying out the others, renting the house as an income property, or selling it and dividing the proceeds are all legitimate — our sell or rent an inherited house framework walks the math. For most Dania Beach inheritances we see — older homes needing a roof, systems, and a full cleanout, with heirs scattered across states — selling as-is is where families land, because nobody's life has room for a renovation project in a city they don't live in.
Step 6: The sale itself
Once the personal representative has authority (or the heirs hold title), the sale is ordinary: a contract, a title search, a closing, proceeds distributed per the estate. As-is sales skip the cleanout and repairs entirely — the years of belongings can stay, which for many families is the difference between manageable and impossible. The broader process is on our inherited house page, and we're based in Dania Beach itself, so the local records, title companies, and timelines are our home turf.
Dealing with a house full of belongings
Long-owned homes hold long lives: furniture, tools, paperwork, keepsakes, and the occasional genuine valuable. Handle it in order. First, the documents and valuables pass — one careful sweep for wills, deeds, jewelry, photos, and anything with obvious sentimental weight, done by family or with family on a video call. Second, decide what's worth an estate sale or donation pickup; in the Broward area both are easy to arrange. Third, let go of the rest without guilt: an as-is sale can include everything that remains, from the garage to the attic, at no extra work to you. The cleanout is consistently the task families dread most and the one most easily handed off.
If you're handling this from out of state
Plenty of Dania Beach inheritances land on children who left Florida decades ago. Nearly everything above can be run remotely: probate through a Broward estate attorney, property checks through a local realtor, neighbor, or — for houses we're evaluating — through us, and closing by mail-away or online notarization. The two things worth a trip, if you can manage one, are the belongings sweep (nobody can choose your keepsakes for you) and a final walk-through of the house you grew up in, on your own schedule rather than a closing deadline's. Everything else is logistics, and logistics is our side of the table.
