Every summer, Greater Boston families decide it is finally time to sell the inherited house. The estate has settled enough, the market is active, and the carrying costs are wearing on everyone. Then the family calls a realtor, sets a price, and lists the property. In that order. And that order is the mistake.
The date-of-death appraisal is not paperwork that happens alongside the sale. It is the document that establishes the estate's tax position before the sale, and skipping it or ordering it after the fact creates problems that follow the heirs for years.
The Appraisal Sets the Stepped-Up Basis
When heirs inherit real property, the tax basis generally steps up to the fair market value as of the date of death. This is the single most valuable and most overlooked provision in estate taxation; the stepped-up basis tax benefit most heirs don't know they have until it's too late explains how the provision works and why documentation is what makes it usable. That number determines the capital gain, or lack of one, when the heirs eventually sell. A house purchased decades ago for $180,000 and worth $850,000 at the owner's death is sold by the heirs against a basis of roughly $850,000, not $180,000.
But the stepped-up basis is only as strong as the documentation behind it. If the heirs sell without a date-of-death appraisal, they are left arguing basis from assessor records, online estimates, or memory. None of those hold up the way a certified retrospective appraisal does, and the difference can be a five-figure or six-figure tax bill.
The Listing Price Is a Different Question Than the Basis
Families often assume the eventual sale price answers the valuation question. It does not. The sale price reflects the market on the day of sale, months or years after the date of death, with whatever repairs, clearing out, and market movement happened in between. The gap between those two dates is exactly why the valuation must be anchored to the correct one; how market conditions on the date of death affect taxable value covers why the appraiser reconstructs the market as it existed then, not as it exists at listing time. The basis reflects the date of death. Two different dates, two different questions, and only one of them is answered by the closing statement.
The clean sequence looks like this: commission the date-of-death appraisal first, establish the basis, then engage the listing conversation with a documented starting point. The appraisal also gives the family a defensible reference for evaluating offers, which matters when multiple heirs must agree that a price is fair. For families where agreement does not come easily, why heirs often disagree on value and how an appraisal prevents family conflict explains how the independent valuation keeps a summer sale from becoming a summer standoff.
Selling an inherited Greater Boston home this summer can absolutely be the right move. Just make sure the appraisal comes first. It is a small step in the sequence that protects the largest numbers in the transaction.
If you are an executor or attorney managing a Greater Boston estate with real property, our estate planning and date-of-death appraisal service delivers the USPAP-compliant documentation you need before any estate filing or property decision.
