How to get hoarder sibling to empty/sell elder’s home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell them it has to be sold due to tax reasons. There’s no disputing that. Set a date that the realtor is coming and the house will need to be empty by that date. Suggest they move anything they wish to keep to storage, and there will be an estate sale and clean out the week before the realtor comes.

This is genius and true. I'm doing this.

I told the real estate agent a date for getting house on the market and copied hoarder who emailed within minutes to say it'll be a month later. OMG. The delay tactics have already started (again).

OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you don’t own the house yourself outright, no, you cannot do anything legally to force the sale. Even if you are co-inheritors of your parents’ home, you can’t force the sale prior to your parents’ deaths. Even after they die, you would need to take costly legal action to force the sale and it probably would cost you more than just paying for upkeep and taxes for a decade or more.

Parent owns the house and wants to sell it, so I thankfully won't need to force a sale--at least not with the parent. The sibling--who does not own the house--keeps delaying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn't read the whole thread, but I have a difficult sibling who I would like to maintain a relationship with but also need some boundaries. Texting is your friend. You do not need to respond immediately (or ever if the text is rude). Phone calls can go straight to VM and be dealt with when you feel like it.

Thank you. This is smart. I do a lot by text or email to have everything in writing. I do need to remember that I don't need to respond immediately.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell them it has to be sold due to tax reasons. There’s no disputing that. Set a date that the realtor is coming and the house will need to be empty by that date. Suggest they move anything they wish to keep to storage, and there will be an estate sale and clean out the week before the realtor comes.

This is genius and true. I'm doing this.

I told the real estate agent a date for getting house on the market and copied hoarder who emailed within minutes to say it'll be a month later. OMG. The delay tactics have already started (again).

OP

Stop keeping the hoarder in the loop like that. You work with the pros and set dates etc. Then separately tell hoarder when they need to clear the crap out if they want to keep it.

Otherwise you risk them causing a scene and people getting scared to work with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell them it has to be sold due to tax reasons. There’s no disputing that. Set a date that the realtor is coming and the house will need to be empty by that date. Suggest they move anything they wish to keep to storage, and there will be an estate sale and clean out the week before the realtor comes.

This is genius and true. I'm doing this.

I told the real estate agent a date for getting house on the market and copied hoarder who emailed within minutes to say it'll be a month later. OMG. The delay tactics have already started (again).

OP

Why on earth are you copying your sibling on this stuff? Get a plan with the real estate agent and just execute on your plan. You have POA. You need to assume the relationship with your sibling will implode. They have a mental illness. You aren’t going to magically solve this. Just do what you need to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell them it has to be sold due to tax reasons. There’s no disputing that. Set a date that the realtor is coming and the house will need to be empty by that date. Suggest they move anything they wish to keep to storage, and there will be an estate sale and clean out the week before the realtor comes.

This is genius and true. I'm doing this.

I told the real estate agent a date for getting house on the market and copied hoarder who emailed within minutes to say it'll be a month later. OMG. The delay tactics have already started (again).

OP

Stop keeping the hoarder in the loop like that. You work with the pros and set dates etc. Then separately tell hoarder when they need to clear the crap out if they want to keep it.

Otherwise you risk them causing a scene and people getting scared to work with you.

Noted. Thank you.

OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell them it has to be sold due to tax reasons. There’s no disputing that. Set a date that the realtor is coming and the house will need to be empty by that date. Suggest they move anything they wish to keep to storage, and there will be an estate sale and clean out the week before the realtor comes.

This is genius and true. I'm doing this.

I told the real estate agent a date for getting house on the market and copied hoarder who emailed within minutes to say it'll be a month later. OMG. The delay tactics have already started (again).

OP

Why on earth are you copying your sibling on this stuff? Get a plan with the real estate agent and just execute on your plan. You have POA. You need to assume the relationship with your sibling will implode. They have a mental illness. You aren’t going to magically solve this. Just do what you need to do.

You are right. It’s hard to step out of the family dynamic yet I’m going to do what you say.

You all are helping me feel brave. Thank you!!

OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Try to keep the hoarder away for the day if the haul and then block their number.
Also how do you make sure she doesn’t have access to the house to resume hoarding?

Change the locks.

I'd have a realtor teed up and ready to list. There will also need to be a deep clean by hired pros, perhaps a specialty company. The realtor can likely give suggestions.

Just get it done, OP. Rip off the bandaid. The mentally ill hoarder is not going to do the heavy lifting here.

[Anonymous]

So sorry op. Use the money from the sale to pay yourself back for professional clean out. Change locks. Anything not trash goes to storage unit with 3 months paid. After that sibling must retrieve or pay or it gets sold. Keep it businesslike.

You can be empathetic to sibling but delaying won’t change anything. Whether it’s one month or 5 it’s the same challenge for sibling.
Fwiw long ago I dated someone who had a similar issue and still had their parents house , unoccupied, unsold, unrented, for years (now it’s been decades) after their death (in a very hcol area no less) . They just couldn’t deal with it. There is no logic.

[Anonymous]

Give them a month to get out what ever they want and then hire someone with a dumpster and clean it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Elderly parent moved out two years ago. If we don’t sell house by a certain point, it will be expensive taxwise for the elderly parent with dementia.

Hoarder sibling has filled several of their own houses and a storage unit with junk and is in no hurry to empty the stuff they want (most everything) from the house.

While I can stand firm and say I will call the junk haulers by a certain date, I will definitely be screamed at and hoarder sibling will tell their family I’m a horrible person.

Any advice for getting this house cleared out and sold?

One idea I had is to rent a storage unit and pay to have all the crud the hoarder wants moved to that location.

I can’t make them hire a moving company.

I am pretty sure they lie when they say the take trash from our clearing out process and throw it away at home. Hoarder has fought me over a trash bag filled with trash.


I DO NOT want to end up as a co-owner on a house with the hoarder. If I do, can I make them sell the house??

This doesn't make any sense

[Anonymous]

The owner needs to live in the home for 2 of the last 5 years prior to a sale to avoid capital gains taxes.
With the way poor OP’s sibling is behaving they are going to come up on this in no time. Not to mention the property taxes, the costs of rehabbing the place for sale, etc.

What Is the 2 Out of 5 Year Rule?
In order to qualify for the principal residency exclusion, an owner must pass both ownership and usage tests. The two-out-of-five-year rule states that an owner must have owned the property that is being sold for at least two years (24 months) in the five years prior to the sale. The owner must have also used the home as their primary residence for at least 730 days, which is 24 months or two years, in the five years right before the closing date of the home's sale. In both instances, the two years don't have to be consecutive.

[Anonymous]

They will never get rid of their hoard. Never. It’s going to be screaming and crying no matter when you do it, so sooner is better than later for your own sanity.

[Anonymous]

Update.

As expected, sibling yelled at me after personal organizers arrived to assess our situation.

They did not like how I spoke. They did not like the deadline I set.

They said they could get stuff done in four weeks and then said maybe they could not and would have to check. Tory could not commit to a date, but they have a new phone with a calendar right there…They try to slide out of sticking to a schedule.

Other fun situation after clearing out house for four hours:

Sibling had taken parent’s tax forms home even though I’m the one who does the taxes. When I asked for them, they said, “Are you going to give me back the bag of books?”

They do not like it when I throw out trash. Mostly the bag had old cpap tubes, magazines, and few of those “Chicken Soul” type books.

They left these magazine and books spread all over the floor and I bagged them up to clear a path for the visitors.

One late night, I drove with them to the dumpster to drop trash. They did not expect that, but it was late and it seemed safer to go. They said they could not throw away the trash because it wasn’t the right kind of trash. They made a big show of reading the sign and saying they had better not leave it after all.

Boy, a hoarder will twist themselves up in knots.

I’m exhausted. I am not sure how I will get through this.

OP

[Anonymous]

On the plus side, the hoarder has not yet started to bring more junk INTO the house.

And they are okay with letting certain kinds of things go. AND they have stopped saying they want to lug 80 boxes of books to the used bookstore and seem willing to let a junk hauler take them.

I told them every time I have to go to that house, I take two or more bags of trash with with me.



OP