Where an empty house loses value during probate: Five questions to ask whoever is looking after it

When someone dies and their house stands empty while the estate is sorted out, most families worry about the dramatic things, like a burst pipe in January or a break-in. Those happen, and they're expensive when they do. Most of the value that goes missing from an empty house goes more slowly than that, over months, and nobody writes it down because nothing obviously went wrong.

I gave a talk on this for the Institute of Legacy Management, the membership body for people who administer gifts left to charities in wills. It was streamed as an ILM webinar on Thursday 10 September 2026, the first of the sessions I mentioned when Prospect joined the Institute as a Corporate Partner. I pitched it at legacy officers, because they're so often the beneficiaries furthest from the house. The same problem sits with anyone waiting on an estate with an empty property in it, so this is the talk written up for executors and families as much as for charities.

Who is watching the house

The executor or their solicitor instructs the work, and the agents and contractors report back to the solicitor. A beneficiary, whether that's a niece at the other end of the country or a charity with dozens of estates on the go, tends to hear about the house when there's a problem or when there's a cheque. Nobody ever built the plumbing that would let them see it in between.

None of this is anyone's fault. It's what happens when a property passes through six pairs of hands between the death and the sale and nobody owns the whole picture. We're regularly sent files where the only arrangement for the house is a neighbour "keeping an eye on it".

Where an empty house loses value

In the talk I split it into four.

Insurance

An empty house isn't covered the way an occupied one is. Most home policies change once a property has been unoccupied for a set period, often 30 days and sometimes 60, and from then on the cover comes with conditions such as inspections at set intervals and the water being drained down. A policy in breach of its conditions may not pay out when it's needed. The £30,000 flood in the contractor liability piece started with a central heating system nobody had drained. I went through the deadlines that start running on an empty probate property in an earlier piece on the three clocks.

The valuation

The date-of-death value is the starting point for inheritance tax, and every later offer gets judged against it. If it came from a quick opinion rather than evidence, everything built on it is weaker than it looks. HMRC can also refer a value it doubts to the Valuation Office Agency. In the talk I used a composite house in Shropshire, with the names and figures changed, where eleven agents were given exactly the same report in the same week and came back with opinions from £360,000 to £510,000. The house and the paperwork were identical, and the opinions were £150,000 apart. I'd argue the number matters less than whether anyone can show how it was reached, and I made that case at more length in the piece on valuation evidence.

The contents

Most people treat a house clearance as a cost to keep down. Sometimes it runs the other way, and one of the most valuable things in the estate is inside the house: a car on the drive, say, or a painting nobody in the family recognised. A clearance that happens before anyone has looked properly is a loss nobody ever records, because nobody knew it was there. The car is a problem on its own, too. Left on the drive, it loses value every month and tells anyone passing that the house is empty.

The paperwork matters just as much. On one recent file it was a building society passbook, the only record of that account anywhere. On another, a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions arrived a month after the death and turned into a liability nobody had budgeted for.

There's a tax angle too. HMRC's IHT408 schedule is for household goods that beneficiaries give to charity, and those gifts can count towards the 10% of the estate that has to go to charity for the reduced 36% rate of inheritance tax, claimed on IHT430. None of it works without an itemised record of what was in the house. If that record was never made, the option just disappears, and nobody ever finds out what it cost.

Time

On our own cases, an empty house costs the estate around £140 a week just to stand still. That covers the inspections the insurer insists on, the unoccupied insurance premium, garden maintenance in season and the standing charges on the utilities. Council tax comes on top once the exemption for a deceased person's empty home runs out. In England and Wales that exemption usually lasts until six months after the grant, as long as the house stays empty and hasn't been sold or transferred. Over the eight months a stuck sale can take, that's close to £5,000 spent before anything has even gone wrong, and a good deal more if prices are falling. Now that the grant of probate arrives in a matter of weeks, the house is usually what sets the pace for the whole estate.

What the first visit should settle

Most of these leaks are closed, or at least measured, on the first visit. The house needs making safe and insurable, which in practice means the services isolated, the water drained down, the locks changed to an insurance-approved British Standard and a proper security check. Then somebody has to find out what the house knows, which is mostly paperwork, and look at the contents properly before anything is moved. I'd expect a written report of that visit, with photographs and meter readings, within days rather than weeks. That report becomes the baseline everyone refers back to when something changes later.

Five questions to ask

No beneficiary can be expected to know every detail of an empty house, and nobody should have to hold it in their head. The information usually exists already, in the body of an instruction email or an appendix at the back of a report. It's written down. It just isn't anywhere a beneficiary can ask a question of it. If the answers exist in writing, the only thing you need to know is who to ask, and for most beneficiaries that means the executor or the solicitor acting for them. These are the five questions I put to the room. You can ask them of anyone, including us. Put them in an email, so the answers come back in writing.

• Is the property insured, on what basis, and when was it last inspected to the policy's conditions?
• What is the date-of-death valuation based on, and can I see the evidence?
• Has a record of the contents and the paperwork been made, when, and by whom?
• Who is holding the keys, and who has been through the door since the death?
• What is the property costing the estate each week, and what is the plan to stop it?

If the answers come back quickly, documented and evidenced, the house is in good hands. If they come back as a phone call and a reassurance, there's a problem, and you've just found where it is.

The fourth question is the easiest to overlook. Keys to an empty house multiply: the family has a set and a neighbour often has one. If nobody knows how many are out there, the house isn't secure in any meaningful sense, whatever the insurance schedule says. I made the same point in the piece on vacant property.

A stake in the ground

Anyone looking after an empty house in an estate should be able to answer those five questions in writing, at any point in the administration, without having to go away and find out. In my view that's the least an executor or a beneficiary is entitled to expect, and asking costs nothing.

The person who owned that house decided, probably at a kitchen table, where it should go. What arrives at the end should be what they meant, rather than whatever is left after the water damage, the missed insurance inspection, the clearance that took the paintings and the valuation that was two villages out.

I would be interested to hear from executors and beneficiaries on this. Whether you recognise the gap I have described from an estate you have been part of, or whether you have found a better way of keeping sight of an empty house during probate than the one I have set out here. You can find me at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.

At Prospect PS we write down every stage of an empty property's management, dated and signed by whoever attended, because the people who inherit are rarely the people who were there.