Keep, Rent, or Sell: The Real Math on an Inherited Florida Home

Every family that inherits a house faces the same three doors: keep it, rent it out, or sell it. Plenty has been written urging people through one door or another — usually by someone who benefits from the choice. We’re a company that buys houses, so we have a stake here too, and we’d rather say that plainly and then give you an honest ledger for all three paths than pretend to be neutral while steering you.

What follows is the real math, with round numbers you can swap for your own. None of it replaces sitting down with your CPA and probate attorney, and none of it produces a universal right answer, because there isn’t one. But most families we talk to have never seen the three options laid out side by side with the unglamorous line items included. That’s what this is.

One note before the ledgers: who can decide is a separate question from what to decide. If the estate is still in probate, the personal representative’s authority and any need for court involvement come first — our pillar guide to Florida probate covers that, and if several heirs share the house, Multiple Heirs, One House covers the family side.

Path one: keep the house

Keeping makes emotional sense more often than financial sense, and sometimes emotional sense should win — a house can hold a family’s history, or an heir may genuinely want to live in it. The mistake isn’t keeping the house; it’s keeping it without pricing it.

The line items:

Property taxes, reassessed. This is the one that surprises people. If the previous owner had a homestead exemption and years of the Save Our Homes cap, they were likely paying taxes on an assessed value far below market. Those benefits generally fall away at death unless an heir qualifies for their own homestead, and the property is typically reassessed at market value. A bill that was $2,500 a year can become $6,000 or more. Call the county property appraiser’s office for the real number — we explain the mechanics in Is There an Inheritance Tax in Florida?

Insurance. Florida homeowner’s insurance is expensive to begin with, and two factors make it worse here: older homes (roof age matters enormously to insurers) and vacancy. A house sitting empty usually needs a vacant-property policy, which costs more and covers less. If nobody will live in the house, get an actual quote — don’t assume the previous owner’s premium.

Maintenance and the roof clock. A rule of thumb many owners use is one to two percent of the home’s value per year for upkeep, more for older homes. In South Florida, the big-ticket items — roof, air conditioning, plumbing, electrical panel — also drive insurability, so deferring them isn’t free.

HOA or condo dues, where they apply, continue every month regardless of occupancy, and special assessments don’t pause for grief.

A round-number sketch on a $380,000 house nobody lives in: $6,000 taxes, $4,000–$6,000 vacant-home insurance, $4,000 maintenance reserve, utilities and lawn care perhaps $2,500. Call it $16,000–$18,000 a year to own a house that produces nothing — against whatever appreciation the market delivers, which no one can promise. If an heir moves in and homesteads it, the picture improves considerably; that’s a genuinely different case.

Path two: rent it out

Renting sounds like the compromise — keep the asset, let a tenant pay the bills. Sometimes it works exactly that way. The honest version of the math includes lines that first-time landlords tend to skip.

Start with realistic market rent, then subtract:

Management. If you’ll hire a property manager — and if you live out of state, you almost certainly should — expect roughly eight to ten percent of collected rent, plus leasing fees when tenants turn over. Managing from another state yourself is a real job with a phone that rings at bad hours; our long-distance executor checklist gives a taste of what remote coordination actually involves.

Vacancy. Budget for the unit sitting empty some fraction of the time — one month a year is a common planning figure.

Repairs and turnover. Tenants generate wear. Between-tenant repainting, appliance failures, and AC service are recurring costs, not surprises.

Insurance and taxes. Landlord policies differ from homeowner policies, and the reassessed property taxes from path one apply here in full — a rental never qualifies for your homestead exemption.

Getting it rent-ready. An inherited house often needs clearing out and some work before a tenant can move in. That’s cash out before the first rent check arrives — see our article on estate cleanouts.

Round numbers on the same $380,000 house renting for $2,600 a month: $31,200 gross, minus roughly $3,000 management, $2,600 vacancy allowance, $3,500 repairs and turnover, $3,500 landlord insurance, $6,000 taxes. That’s about $12,600 a year net before any mortgage, before rent-ready costs, and before your time — roughly a three percent cash return on the equity, plus whatever appreciation comes. Some families find that entirely worth it, especially with a local heir willing to keep an eye on things. Others discover they’ve bought a part-time job three states away. Also worth asking your CPA: rental use brings depreciation and other tax wrinkles that change the eventual sale math.

If the house already has tenants in it, that’s its own topic — see Inherited a House With Tenants.

Path three: sell

Selling converts the house into money the estate can actually distribute, which is why it’s the most common choice. But “sell” is really two doors.

List it with an agent. Listing usually produces the highest gross price, and for a house in good condition with time and a local decision-maker, it’s often the right call. The honest subtractions: repairs and prep the market expects (paint, flooring, sometimes a roof — anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands), agent commissions and seller closing costs (commonly in the range of six to eight percent all-in), and months of carrying costs while the house is prepped, listed, under contract, and closed — three to six months is a reasonable planning window, longer if a financed buyer’s deal falls through and you restart. On our $380,000 example: perhaps $385,000 gross after modest prep, minus $15,000 prep, minus roughly $27,000 commissions and costs, minus $6,000 of carrying costs over four months — landing somewhere near $337,000 net, with meaningful uncertainty in both directions.

Sell as-is for cash. A direct cash buyer pays less — that’s the tradeoff, stated plainly. What the estate gets in exchange: no repairs, no cleanout, no showings, no financing contingency, and a closing measured in weeks rather than months, which also means one or two months of carrying costs instead of four to six. If a legitimate buyer offers, say, $320,000 with no commission and few seller costs, the estate might net around $315,000–$318,000 — less than the listing path’s likely net, but known, fast, and effort-free. The gap between the two nets — in this sketch, roughly $20,000 — is the honest price of certainty and zero project management. Sometimes that gap is worth paying; sometimes it isn’t. It’s wider for houses needing little work and narrower for houses needing a lot, which is why estates with major deferred repairs find as-is offers comparatively stronger.

Whichever sale route you weigh, compare net proceeds and months, not sticker prices — and vet any cash buyer properly; we wrote ten questions to ask precisely because our industry has bad actors.

Putting the three ledgers side by side

A simple exercise that settles more family debates than any argument: for each path, write down four numbers on one page.

1. Cash out now — what the path costs up front (rent-ready work, listing prep, or nothing).
2. Cash flow per year — negative for keeping, modestly positive for renting, zero after a sale.
3. Cash in hand at the end — net sale proceeds now, or the eventual sale later at an unknowable price.
4. Hours and headaches — honestly, whose time, and who lives closest.

Then add the question that isn’t a number: what does the family actually want? A house that one sibling treasures and another sees as a burden isn’t a math problem, and pretending it is tends to end badly — that’s how families drift toward partition actions. Sometimes the answer is a sibling buyout; sometimes it’s renting for a year while everyone catches their breath; often it’s selling and dividing proceeds cleanly.

We won’t pretend there’s a verdict here, because there isn’t. The right answer depends on the family — its finances, its geography, and what the house means to the people in it.

If the sell column is where you land

If, after the ledgers, selling as-is is one of the options you want a real number for, that’s what we do. 123SellCash buys inherited and estate homes in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties for cash, in whatever condition they’re in, with the contents handled and no commission to us. We’ll give you a written offer you can set beside an agent’s opinion and this article’s framework — and we genuinely encourage that comparison, because an offer only helps you if it wins on your numbers. Request a no-obligation offer, or read how our process works first. Your probate attorney should confirm who has authority to sign before anything moves forward.