Question 1

Can we put the Irish house on the market before the grant issues?

Accepted Answer

Marketing, yes; closing, no: the property can be listed and a buyer found while the grant application runs, but title cannot pass until the grant issues — no personal representative can convey what they cannot yet legally deal with. The sequencing that works: grant application and sale preparation run in parallel (title investigated, contracts drafted, BER and compliance items gathered), so the file is sale-ready the day the grant lands. What to avoid is the contract signed rashly before the grant with tight closing dates the Probate Office cannot be made to respect.

Question 2

Do any of us need to travel to Ireland for the sale?

Accepted Answer

No. The estate’s side of an Irish conveyance runs on documents: contracts and deeds signed abroad (couriered, and sworn or witnessed where required), the estate agent managing viewings locally, our office handling title, contract, closing and the Land Registry. Sale proceeds move through the client account and are remitted as the estate directs. Executors sell Irish houses from London, Boston and Sydney routinely; the only common reason to travel is to clear the personal contents — and even that can be managed locally.

Question 3

The property has been empty for years — or someone is living in it. Does that complicate the sale?

Accepted Answer

Both are common and both are manageable, differently: the long-empty property raises practical items (insurance, security, services, sometimes title tidy-ups where boundaries or rights of way were never formalised) that we sweep early so they don’t surface mid-contract. The occupied property is the sharper case — a relative in possession, sometimes with claims to stay (a promise relied on, a right asserted) — and it moves the file toward the practice’s litigation half: occupation is resolved before or alongside sale, by agreement where possible, by the machinery where not.

Question 4

What about Irish tax on the sale and the inheritance?

Accepted Answer

Our standing rule, stated plainly: we do not advise on tax. An estate sale can raise Irish Capital Acquisitions Tax questions for beneficiaries (including non-resident ones — Irish property sits inside the Irish net wherever they live), possible Capital Gains Tax questions where value moves between death and sale, and home-country questions on top; all of it belongs with the estate’s accountants and tax advisers, and Revenue’s published guidance. Our lane is the legal machinery — the grant, the clearances and procedural steps a sale requires, the conveyance, and coordination with the tax advisers so remittance abroad happens cleanly.

Question 5

How long from instruction to money in the estate account — honestly?

Accepted Answer

Two clocks run: the grant (the Irish Probate Office processes clean applications in weeks, but the cross-border preliminaries — sealed foreign grant copies, PPS numbers for non-resident parties, translations — are the real timeline, attacked from day one) and the sale (an ordinary Irish conveyance: weeks from contract to closing once a buyer is found, plus the market’s own time to produce one). Run in parallel, a straightforward estate sale realistically completes within months end-to-end; run in series, everything queues. The first reply gives the estimate for your facts and updates it honestly as the file develops.

Selling Irish Property from Abroad

One File, Two Tracks

The Executor’s Position, Protected

Frequently Asked Questions

Irish Property to Sell, Family Abroad?

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