San Francisco Probate Buying Proces

                   A probate sale with court confirmation occurs when a person passes away, who may have a will and leaves the property to heirs.  When there is court confirmation, the listing agent typically lists a property below market, sets an offer date and accepts an offer. If your offer gets accepted during the offer process, you may actually have contingencies into your offer.  If your offer is accepted, you will need to put 10% deposit at the title company instead of the typical 3%.  However, the attorney cannot petition the state to set a court date for potential overbid until all contingencies are removed. The court date is typically at least a month to 45 days from the date you remove all contingencies (if any).

                   The court date allows other potential buyers to go to court to overbid and the final accepted overbid (if any) gets confirmed. The first overbid would be 5% plus $500 above the accepted offer price.  Bidding is like auction style and can be bid in increments of $5000 or more. If the sale is confirmed, that is the final sales price (there are no contingencies and 10% deposit is made to title company immediately, so if you can't close or perform, you will lose your 10% deposit).    If you are lucky and no one shows up to overbid, your accepted offer is the price you pay. 

                 Since the owner of home passed away, there typically aren't many disclosures. Also, in probate sales, transfer tax and energy and water compliance is paid by buyer (which is typically paid by seller in SF for normal standard sales). 

                 You may want to do the initial bidding when you may still have contingencies.  If you do overbidding in court, there are no contingencies and you will lose 10% deposit if you cannot perform.  You need to be 100-110% position you can get 

a loan and perform.