Valuing a house for probate.

[MitchT]

My mum and I are about to go through the process of obtaining probate for my dad's estate. Apparently we need to provide the value of the house he shared with my mum as a part of this. I know for a fact that his assets, including his half of the house, won't be more than half of the inheritance tax threshold, so would it be acceptable to provide our own estimate of the house's value, or do we still have to appoint someone "official" to value the house and, if so, who?

[Groat]

You probably can self declare but a professional appraisal will be highly unlikely to be challenged. (And isn’t expensive). And could be done without a visit.

Edited by Groat on Friday 29th April 22:10

[Somebody]

Can you perhaps get 3 estate agents to value the house and use the average?

[sociopath]

We just used estate agent valuation for probate, had no problems getting that accepted. Didn't need 3

[MitchT]

I figured an EA valuation would probably get the job done as there's no danger of the estate value bothering the IHT threshold, but my mum was keen not to have someone poking around the house, hence me wondering if we could just self-certify. A near-identical house two doors up the road was on the market in January last year, so we'd have that information for support.

[Insurancejon]

Tried sticking the address in Zoopla? They have finger in the air system

[Sheepshanks]

I've done it twice and both times just used my own estimate. In one case the property's full value would have been an issue but the deceased only owned a quarter of it.

[MitchT]

Jasey_ said:

Are you sure you need probate at all.

From what I can tell you need it if there are savings of more than £20k.

[Black AMG45s]

I asked three local Estate agents to carry out valuation then took an average but make sure you tell them it is for probate purposes
They were happy to do it

[MitchT]

Insurancejon said:

Tried sticking the address in Zoopla? They have finger in the air system

It's comically inaccurate. I just looked for a house two doors down from me which sold last year for £160k. It came back with £252k!