Notes on inherited houses in the East Bay

My name is Ruth Amador. For twenty years I was the paralegal at a probate practice on 14th Street in downtown Oakland. That meant I was the one who carried the petitions over to the Rene C. Davidson courthouse, stood in line at the probate window, and sat in the hallway outside Department 201 while the attorneys argued.

I retired in 2024. The calls didn't stop.

They come from people who just inherited a house in Oakland or Hayward and have no idea what happens next. Sometimes the caller is living in the house. Sometimes it's the sibling in another state asking when the check comes. Hardly anyone knows what letters testamentary are. Fewer know why the creditor window runs four months. And nobody is ready for the property tax bill, which can be a multiple of what their mother paid.

This site is where I put the answers so I can stop repeating myself.

What I cover here

Alameda and Contra Costa counties. That is it.

The subject is narrow: what happens to a house when the owner dies. Probate, or how to stay out of it. Proposition 19 and the reassessment that follows a parent's death, which the Board of Equalization explains in dense language and I try to explain in plain language. Brothers and sisters who inherited together and can't agree. And how estates actually get houses sold, which looks nothing like a Sunday open house.

I'm not a lawyer and never was. These are a retired paralegal's notes. When someone needs the official version I send them to the California courts' self-help pages.

A word on selling

Some inherited houses should be kept. A lot of them should be sold soon, before the carrying costs and the arguments eat the equity. When the house is in probate, or split three ways, or carrying a repair list that would scare a lender, the sale I most often saw close without drama was a cash sale to a local buyer. we-buy-houses-in-bay-area.com is one such outfit. Its pages say it connects Bay Area homeowners with local cash buyers who take houses as-is, that there's no agent commission, that the seller picks the closing date, and that you can say no to the offer.

I have no stake in it. I just like transactions that end.

The articles

Alameda County probate house timeline, month by month. The petition, the letters, the four-month creditor window, and why it runs nine to eighteen months.

Prop 19 and the inherited house: when the tax bill jumps. The parent-child exclusion after February 16, 2021, the one-year exemption window, and a worked example with a 1978 Oakland bungalow.

Three siblings, one Oakland house: how families settle it. Buyout math, what a partition action really costs, and a kitchen table in the Laurel district where I watched a family decide.

Read them in whatever order. The probate one is the longest, because probate is the longest.

Ruth Amador spent twenty years filing probate petitions for an Oakland practice. She writes these notes for families who inherit a house and a pile of forms.