Richland County puts the Register of Deeds and the Probate Court in the same building, the Administration Building at 2020 Hampton Street, which means the two errands that matter most are one trip. Use that. Pull the deed history and open the estate on the same morning, because in Columbia the deed is where the surprises live. A great deal of the housing in North Columbia and on the Southeastern side has been in the same family since the sixties, and forty years of informal transfers leaves a chain of title with gaps in it: a parent who died without a will, a sibling who signed a quitclaim that never got recorded, an ex-spouse still on the deed from 1979. None of that stops you owning the house. All of it stops you selling it on a schedule. The second Columbia-specific thing is what a vacant house here does over a summer. We buy in this city year-round, and the inherited houses we see in August are not the houses they were in May. An empty house with the power off in Columbia humidity grows mould in the ductwork, and a mould finding turns a financeable house into a cash-only house overnight, which changes your buyer pool rather than just your price. If the estate is going to take months, leave the air running at eighty degrees. It is the cheapest insurance available to you. Third, be clear about what Columbia's market strength does and does not do for you. Houses here go under contract in about forty days at a median near two hundred seventy-six thousand, and an agent will quite reasonably tell you to list. That advice assumes a house that photographs well and passes an appraisal. Inherited houses in the older parts of the city frequently have neither, with original wiring, a roof past its life and a kitchen nobody has touched in thirty-five years, and the repair spend to get them list-ready routinely exceeds what the higher sale price returns. You would also be fronting that money on a house you cannot properly insure while it stands empty, before the estate has distributed anything to anyone. That is the trade we ask families to actually price out rather than assume. Sometimes it favours listing, and we will say so.
Nothing sells until the estate is open
This is the part that catches families out, and it is the same every time.
When someone dies owning a house in Richland County, nobody can
sign a deed for it until the estate has been opened at the
Richland County Probate Court, Administration Building, 2020 Hampton Street, Columbia, SC 29204 and someone has
been appointed with authority to act. Not the eldest child, not whoever has
the keys, not whoever has been paying the taxes. Until that appointment
exists, there is no seller — and no buyer of any kind, cash or financed,
can close.
What that means in practice
If you are ringing us about a parent's house in Columbia, the first
genuinely useful question is not what it is worth. It is whether anyone has
been to the Richland County Probate Court yet. If the answer is no, that is the next
step, and it is one we cannot take for you — we are a buyer, not your
lawyer. If the answer is yes and there is a personal representative
appointed, we can usually move quickly from there.
Why inherited houses suit a cash sale
An inherited house in Columbia is usually empty, usually behind on
maintenance, and usually costing somebody money every month in taxes and
insurance while the family works out what to do. The local market runs
about 40 days to contract at a median near
$276,000 — but that is for a house that shows
well. An empty house with a dated kitchen and a roof a lender will question
does not sell in 40 days. It sits, and the carrying
costs keep running.
Multiple heirs
Where there are several siblings, everyone with an interest has to agree to
sell and sign. We would rather know that up front than three weeks in. If
one heir is out of state — common in Columbia — that is workable, but
it adds time, and time is the thing an empty house does not have much of.
Deeds for Richland County are recorded at the
Richland County Register of Deeds, Administration Building, 2020 Hampton Street, Columbia, SC 29204.