What It Costs to Hold an Inherited Home, by State

Inheriting a house sounds like a windfall. But from the day it becomes yours, the meter is running. Before you can sell, and usually for the many months an estate spends in probate, someone has to keep paying the property taxes and the homeowners insurance. This study prices that carrying cost for a median-value home in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The range is wide: from about $3,000 a year in West Virginia to nearly $12,900 in Florida, with the typical state around $6,300. And for many heirs the real number is higher still, for reasons the person who left them the house never had to deal with.

(A quick note on who publishes this: Settled Estate offers paid estate-guidance plans, and a few links below point to our own tools. We publish this as a free, fully sourced study; every figure is drawn from a third-party source, cited in the table, and yours to use whether or not you work with us.)

The two most expensive states to hold an inherited home are costly for opposite reasons. Florida's bill is mostly insurance: about $9,656 a year against $3,251 in property tax, because hurricane and coastal-storm risk has pushed premiums up and insurers out. New Jersey's is almost all property tax: about $10,252 against $2,294 for insurance. They finish within $400 of each other at the top of the table and have almost nothing in common underneath. Property tax is the larger share in 26 states; insurance is the larger share in 25. Where you inherit decides not just how much you pay to hold the home, but what you are paying for.

It usually costs more than the previous owner paid

The figures above are a floor, and two things specific to inheriting a home push the real cost higher.

First, the tax can reset. The rate this study uses is each state's effective rate on owner-occupied housing, which reflects what current owners actually pay, many of them protected by assessment caps or homestead exemptions built up over years. Inheriting a home can undo that: caps like California's Prop 19 limits and Florida's Save Our Homes can reset toward full market value when a property changes hands or stops being someone's primary residence, so an heir's tax bill can land well above the statewide figure here.

Second, the insurance can jump. Most standard homeowners policies limit or drop coverage once a home sits empty for 30 to 60 days, and the estate has to buy a vacant-home or dwelling policy that typically costs more than the original. So the "keep the taxes paid and the house insured" number is a starting point, not a ceiling.

Why probate makes it worse

You usually cannot just sell on day one. Until the estate is opened and the home can be conveyed with clear title, it stays in the decedent's name and the estate keeps paying to hold it. Because probate commonly runs several months to well over a year, the annual figures here are what accrues for each year the house sits; you can estimate your own state's probate length to gauge how many months of carrying cost you are likely to face. There is one piece of good news pointing the other way: because inherited property gets a stepped-up cost basis, a reasonably prompt sale usually avoids most capital-gains tax, which is a strong reason not to hold a home you plan to sell any longer than probate requires.

How we calculated this

The carrying cost is the sum of the two recurring bills every inherited home carries, both priced on the same home: each state's median home value.

• Property tax: the state's median home value times its effective property tax rate on owner-occupied housing.
• Homeowners insurance: the state average annual premium at dwelling coverage equal to that median home value, interpolated between the published $200,000 to $1,000,000 coverage tiers, so the insured amount matches the home rather than a flat benchmark.

It is a comparison figure, not a quote. It excludes the mortgage, utilities, and maintenance, which vary by home, and it assumes continued owner-occupied tax status; as noted above, an estate-held or vacant home can lose that status and cost more. Data verified July 2026; we refresh the property tax, value, and insurance inputs annually. Sources: property tax rates from the Tax Foundation (ACS 2024), home values from Zillow's Home Value Index, and insurance averages from Insurance.com (Quadrant Information Services, 2026).

The full table: all 50 states and DC

Sort by any column, or search for your state. Select a row for the median home value, the effective tax rate, and the source behind each number.

Download the full dataset (CSV)

What an executor should do first

If you are settling an estate that includes a home, three costs need attention before anything else: confirm the property taxes are current (and ask the assessor whether inheriting triggers a reassessment), make sure the home is insured for its actual occupancy status, and find out whether a mortgage is still being paid. These are the bills that keep running while the estate works through probate, and the ones that do the most damage if they lapse. Settled Estate is not a law firm and this is not legal advice; for a home in probate, an estate or real-estate attorney can tell you when and how it can be sold in your state.