People die and then comes the legal scenario that can take years or decades to be solved among several heirs.
This is very common. Siblings disagree, and places sit empty for years.
I knew someone who spent a couple of years working with something like 16 different heirs, to get them all to agree to sell. He really wanted it, it was 6 adjoining lots, and became an enormous garden.
But often, besides heirs disagreeing, there are large unpaid taxes, utility bills, expensas, and so on- and many heirs dont want to pay them off, so they refuse to list or sell. Even though the bills come out of the payment at closing, there are a lot of unrealistic people.
Or, one brother is convinced its worth 300k usd, and the other three would be very happy to split 150k.
I walk by one storefront from time to time, where the owner of the business died in something like 2006. And the display window still is full of 20 year old industrial abrasives, and the family has made zero effort to sell.
Similarly, there was an old cafe on a good stretch of Santa Fe, which sat empty for at least 20 years- prime real estate.
Finally, last spring, it sold- an entire 3 story building on Santa Fe and Austria- and immediately an army of workers began a total restoration.
This is more common than you would think, and often squatters take advantage, giving the divided owners even more reason to procrastinate.
