There's a old joke that many people look through the obituaries to find apartments in the city. Whether that's true or not is unclear, but what is known is that there can be difficulties in selling a deceased person's apartment. The NY Times has a big feature, "Heirs to a Headache," about this very phenomenon that pits sibling against sibling, in the midst of the very raw emotions of death and the vicious real estate market.
Many times relatives will take their normal life resentments and apply them to dealing with the estate, and the best anecdote might be from Michele Kleier. She recounted the tale of brother-and-sister twins who asked her to sell their mother's Upper East side three-bedroom postwar: "The female twin had married well and had it together, while the male twin was very dependent on mommy and daddy and was not successful in life. He really did not want this apartment sold.” And then male twin moved into the apartment.
Ms. Kleier showed the apartment approximately 50 times over the next six months; each visit was like another scene in a black comedy.
“He would always be home. He would follow us around and say things like, ‘I can picture Mom in bed, dying,’ or ‘I remember when she had the IV dripping into her arm — it was such a torturous few years,’ or ‘Make sure you don’t leave your key with the doorman because my mother had a lot of things disappear.’ He would have his computer tuned to a porn site, so you would walk by and see the most vile photos. He made the apartment as messy as he could. He smoked cigars. He wouldn’t open the blinds or flush the toilets.”
Kleier, who managed to sell the apartment for $2.6 million only after the executor had the brother removed, estimates his antics cost him and his sister $300,000 "because after the apartment sat on the market for six months, everybody in town thought it was very negotiable."
The NY Times tips on how to approach an estate sale (hint - hope the deceased had a good estate planner). And last fall, New York magazine suggested that estate sales are often attractive because many times they are in less-than-pristine condition and therefore more attractively priced, but buyers should recognize "The renovation cost can nearly equal the markdown."
