House purchase when the owner has died

Dessa2012

Thanks for all your comments! To add another layer to it, the lady who has died wanted us to buy the house, as she knew us- not sure if that’s in the will though...

annetheman

Dessa2012 said:

Thanks for all your comments! To add another layer to it, the lady who has died wanted us to buy the house, as she knew us- not sure if that’s in the will though...

Is there any other evidence she wanted you to buy it? Perhaps correspondence or other?

Quite a sad story    I sometimes forget there are people with no family 

AdrianC

FreeBear said:
There are teams that pay daily visits to the relevant records office to read through every will that has been granted probate. They then notify the charities (that are paying for the service) of what they are in line to receive - A grubby little venture that eats in to charitable bequests in my opinion. 

If executors didn't try to deceive charities, by failing to inform them of what is legally theirs, then those people wouldn't have a viable business, because the charities wouldn't need to pay them.

So if you want to blame anybody for that, it's not the charities or the searchers. Without their services, the charities would be defrauded of the bequests.

Thrugelmir

Dessa2012 said:

the executor is a neighbour who was unaware she was the executor until a letter came through the door!

Sole executor of the estate? Normally there's more than one named. 

Tooskint

The house can go to the charity as part of her estate.  I know charities that have been left large houses in london as part of wills.  

Thrugelmir

AdrianC said:

 elsien said:

Some charities are notorious for wanting to maximise the amount they get

You say that like it's a bad thing... It's actually their legal duty to maximise the income arising from the bequest.

If I was the neighbour, I'd be relinquishing the executorship asap. There's no benefit to them, but a load of hassle. The deceased was bloody unfair to nominate them in those circumstances, imho.

If you really want to buy the property, you've got two choices. You can wait until it comes on the market with an EA, and then effectively regard it as a repo sale - where you're open to gazump right up until exchange. Or you can contact the charity directly, and say "Look, I'm happy to pay an effective market value, but I'm willing to save you a lot of marketing hassle and cost." - then be unsurprised if that approach gets rejected.

If the executor chooses to stay in place, and handle the sale directly, they can expect to be queried by the beneficiary charity as to whether maximum value was extracted. Selling it to a friend at sub-market-value will be viewed very dimly, because it's money the charity should be receiving to use for their purpose - which was the deceased's intention, after all...

The will could have made financial provision for the neighbour to undertake the role of executor. 
Until the contents of the will are known everything is pure speculation.