Inherited property in Germany: what to do in the first weeks

You are not an isolated case

Around 430,000 properties are inherited in Germany every year; for the baby-boomer generation, studies expect more than 500,000 a year until around 2040 (LBS(öffnet in neuem Tab)). How much this has shifted is shown by the Allensbach survey for Deutsche Bank: in 2024, 54 per cent of heirs had inherited one or more properties, compared with 40 per cent in 2018 (Deutsche Bank, "Erben und Vererben 2024"(öffnet in neuem Tab)).

So the situation you are in has become the norm — it is just that hardly anyone has ever practised it. The sequence below is the one that has proven itself in practice.

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The order that counts

After a death, the same mistake happens almost every time: the family debates selling or keeping for weeks, while the house sits unheated and deadlines run out. The right order is the other way round.

1. Secure. The property must not be damaged. That is a matter of days, not weeks.
2. Check the deadlines. Four of them are hard and run regardless of whether you have decided anything.
3. Gather the documents. Without them, nothing can be valued and nothing can be sold.
4. Decide. Keep, let, sell. This decision can wait — the three steps before it cannot.

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Step 1: Secure the property

From an insurance point of view, an empty house is a different risk from an occupied one. Most buildings insurers require vacancy to be reported and make cover conditional on obligations: regular checks, water turned off, working heating during frost. If you do not report it, you will be worse off in a claim than you might think.

What should be done in the first week:

• Bring the keys together and record who has which. With several heirs, this is the most common later dispute.
• Set the heating to frost protection — do not switch it off in winter. A burst pipe in January costs many times the heating you saved.
• Read the meters and photograph them — electricity, gas, water, heating. They are the basis for every later bill.
• Inform the buildings insurer, report the vacancy, keep paying the premium. A cancelled policy is hard to replace for older buildings.
• Have the post redirected. An overflowing letterbox signals that nobody lives there, and the post contains the contracts you will be looking for anyway.
• Inform the tenants, if the property is let: whom to contact and where to pay. Otherwise rent goes to a frozen account, or is not paid at all.

Within a few weeks, the redirected post produces a second pile: accounts, insurance, subscriptions, memberships, online accounts. Each item has its own deadline, and no one is responsible for this part of the estate — in practice, this is where most things fall through the cracks. A carefully kept list on paper does the job. If you prefer to be guided, Meolea(öffnet in neuem Tab) offers a structure that sets the order and deadlines — a tool from the same founder as Ravenica.

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Step 2: The four deadlines

Deadline	What it is about	Legal basis
6 weeks from knowledge	Disclaiming the inheritance (Ausschlagung). After that it counts as accepted — including loans, a maintenance backlog and unpaid Hausgeld.	§ 1944 BGB
1 month from knowledge	Special right to terminate the flat the deceased rented — unless someone takes over the lease under § 563 BGB. Miss it and the lease continues.	§ 564 BGB
3 months from knowledge	Notifying the tax office (Finanzamt). If real estate is part of the inheritance, this applies even with an opened will.	§ 30 ErbStG
2 years from the death	Land register (Grundbuch) update free of charge, provided the application reaches the land registry within this period. After that, fees based on the property's value.	Note 1 to No. 14110 KV GNotKG

The six-week deadline is the most unpleasant, because it demands a decision under uncertainty. In that time, at the very least get clarity on: outstanding mortgages (Grundschulden), unpaid Hausgeld, special levies from resolutions already passed, and the rough condition of the building. A property with €200,000 left on the loan and a roof refurbishment already resolved can be a negative inheritance.

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Step 3: Documents

You will need these documents in practically every scenario — whether you keep or sell:

• Current land register extract (Grundbuchauszug)
• Proof of inheritance: Erbschein, or notarised will with record of its opening
• For condominium flats: declaration of division (Teilungserklärung), minutes of the last three owners' meetings, the latest annual statement, the balance of the maintenance reserve, the resolutions register (Beschluss-Sammlung)
• Tenancy agreements, the latest Nebenkostenabrechnung, proof of deposits
• Loan agreements and a current balance confirmation
• Energy performance certificate (Energieausweis), insurance policies, maintenance contracts
• Records of refurbishments in recent years

Get hold of these documents before clearing the property. They are often exactly where the skip will later stand. A house clearance that takes the folders with it costs months.

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Step 4: Who actually gets to decide?

If you are the sole heir, you decide alone — you can take the following steps without consulting anyone.

In a community of heirs (Erbengemeinschaft), § 2038 BGB grades decisions by their weight: any co-heir can arrange necessary maintenance on their own, ongoing management needs a majority by inheritance shares, and a sale needs all co-heirs (§ 2040 BGB). For the coming weeks, only one conclusion matters: appointing a property manager does not require unanimity. In communities of heirs that have fallen out, this is often the only step that is still possible at all.

Which measure falls into which category, how a split vote works and how rental income is handled until the estate is divided is covered in detail under rental management for communities of heirs.

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Step 5: Clearing out — the right way round

Clearing the home is emotionally the hardest step and organisationally the most irreversible. The order that has proven itself:

1. Recover the documents. Folders, loose papers, bank correspondence, insurance policies, photos of refurbishments, keys.
2. Go through valuables and document them together — jewellery, coins, cash, art, collections. With several heirs, take a photo record; otherwise suspicions arise that can never be dispelled.
3. Share out keepsakes before a commercial clearance. Afterwards it is too late and cannot be undone.
4. Get written approval from all heirs. A clearance without consent creates liability.
5. Have it cleared, at a fixed price after an on-site survey, with hazardous waste recorded separately.

With a rented flat, the handover date sets the pace; every month of delay costs a full month's rent. With owned property, on the other hand, there is no time pressure — here the more common mistake is clearing too quickly, not too late.

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Step 6: Keep, let or sell

This is the only decision in the whole process that can wait — make it only once steps 1 to 3 are done. We have set out the trade-offs in detail, with the arguments on both sides, under management or sale.

Two points are regularly overlooked, and both cost money:

The speculation period (Spekulationsfrist) keeps running. As heir, you step into the legal position of the deceased (§ 1922 BGB). If they held the property for more than ten years, a sale is free of income tax for you — regardless of how long you yourself have been the owner (§ 23(1) sentence 3 EStG). Check the purchase date before you decide on timing.

Any single co-heir can force a partition auction (Teilungsversteigerung). It is the pressure point in every deadlocked community of heirs and often yields proceeds well below market value. If you want to avoid it, you have to actively involve the other co-heirs — neutral management with identical accounts for everyone is the most effective tool for that.

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What to add in Nuremberg, Fürth and Erlangen

Two features of the region affect almost every inheritance here.

The rent index (Mietspiegel) is your evidence, not your opponent. Inherited flats are disproportionately often let far below the local reference rent, because nobody raised the rent for years. For valuation, that means the income value based on the current rent underestimates the property. Check the scope for increases before accepting a sale price based on the current rent.

Energy condition feeds through to the price. For buildings from the 1950s to the 1970s — the most common type of inherited building in the region — buyers now expect a visible discount for heating and insulation. A current energy performance certificate and a reliable cost estimate for the obvious measure are worth more in sale negotiations than they cost.

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What this article does not cover

This article deals only with the property. The rest of the estate runs in parallel, with its own deadlines and its own responsibilities: the inheritance tax return and valuation belong with a tax adviser, dividing the estate with a notary or a specialist inheritance lawyer, and disputes with the probate court (Nachlassgericht).

What remains in terms of contracts, accounts and online access is described in step 1 — it starts earlier than most people expect.

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Ravenica looks after inherited properties in Nuremberg, Fürth and Erlangen: securing the property, ongoing management, clearance, letting or sale. You will receive a qualified response within 24 hours — what we take on in detail is set out on the inherited property page.