Your mother's house is outside Ocala. You're in Ohio, you work full time, and the probate can't move until the property is dealt with. You might get down here twice. Here is exactly how that works.
Every step of settling a Florida estate quietly assumes somebody can drive over. Let the appraiser in. Meet the roofer at nine. Decide whether the dresser is worth anything. Check the power actually got shut off. Go look at the stain on the ceiling and say how bad it is.
From a thousand miles away, every one of those is a flight, a favor asked of a neighbor, or a guess.
And then the part nobody says out loud: you are about to hand a stranger the key to your parents' house and ask them to tell you the truth about what is inside it.
That is a reasonable thing to be uneasy about. The rest of this page is how we answer it.
You describe the property on the phone. We drive out, walk it, and send you photographs the same day along with an honest read of what is actually there. This costs nothing and commits you to nothing — plenty of people use it just to find out what they have inherited.
A lockbox, a mailed key, or a neighbor who has one. We will rekey the property on the first visit if you want it — on an estate that sat empty, nobody actually knows how many keys are out there. You hold the new code. Every person who goes inside is recorded with the date.
Everything with any possible value is photographed where it sits, before it is touched, and sent to you. You reply when you can — it is a text thread, not a meeting, so the time difference stops mattering. Cash and documents turn up in books and coat pockets on nearly every job.
Clearing first, then whatever the property needs to be sold or handed over. Photographs at the start and end of each working day, from the same positions, so you can see progress rather than being told about it.
A single PDF: the signed item log, before and after photographs of every room, itemized costs, disposal tickets at the county's own rate, and the licence number and insurance certificate of every contractor who set foot inside. Your attorney drops it into the estate accounting without reconstructing anything.
Nobody asks these on the phone. Everybody wonders about them. So here they are, with the answers.
On day one, you don't. Nobody can prove that to a stranger on a phone call. What you get instead is a method that would be very awkward to run while stealing from someone.
Anything of possible value is photographed where it sits, before it moves, and sent to you. If we want to buy something ourselves, you get three completed sale prices for it — what things like it actually sold for, not what someone is asking — and a form with a box on it that says the estate would rather sell it elsewhere. You sign it either way, and it stays in the file. A company intending to help itself does not generate that paperwork.
Photographs from the same spot at the beginning and the end. Not a flattering selection — the same angles in every room, so a before and an after line up against each other. If a wall did not get painted, you will see that it did not get painted.
Whoever you decide. We will rekey it on the first visit and you hold the code. Everyone who goes in after that — us, a licensed trade, an inspector, an agent — is logged with a date. On a house that has been empty a while, assume there are keys out there nobody remembers giving out. That is usually the first thing worth fixing.
This is the one that actually costs families money, and it is why the sorting happens before the loading rather than during it. Jewelry in a sock drawer, savings bonds in a book, a tool chest worth more than the car in front of it. Paper is the category people lose most often — postcards, letters, old photographs, ephemera — because it looks like rubbish and frequently is not.
Not up front. You get a written scope and a price before anything begins, and you pay when the work is finished. The invoice is itemized rather than a single number, so it drops straight into the estate accounting. Disposal is passed through at Marion County's own posted rate with the scale tickets attached — we do not mark up the dump.
Often that is the right answer, particularly from out of state, and we will say so even though it is less work for us. We know local investors and builders who buy in that condition and we will introduce you at no charge, taking no fee from you or from them. Have your attorney or a licensed agent review any offer before you accept it — we are not agents and we do not give real estate advice.
From the first walkthrough, before you have committed to anything. For a lot of people this is the first time they have seen the inside of the house since the funeral, or since years before it.
Everything set aside as potentially valuable, photographed where it was found, with your decision recorded against each line.
Every room, the same angles, start and finish. Settles questions about the condition of the property long after anyone's memory of it is reliable.
One PDF with the inventory, the photographs, every receipt and disposal ticket, and the credentials of every licensed trade who worked on the property.
Towns we work in regularly. Florida place names are not obvious from a thousand miles away, so if the one on the deed is not here, call anyway — it is very often still within range.
You do not need to know what is in it, what it is worth, or what it needs. A street address and a phone number is enough to start.
Say so and we will work to your clock, not ours. Evening calls are normal here — most of the people we talk to are doing this around a full-time job.