The disclosure gap is the real feature
In an ordinary sale you can ask when the roof was done and get an answer that means something. Here the honest answer is usually that nobody knows, and an executor who guesses is doing you no favours.
That is why estate sales are so often paired with sold as is. It is not evasion. It is an executor declining to make promises about a building they never lived in.
What tends to be true of the building
Estate homes are frequently owned by one household for decades, and that cuts both ways. The maintenance is often careful and the systems are often original, because the person living there had no reason to replace a working furnace at eighty.
So the profile is a well kept house with old mechanicals. Everything below is at or past a normal service life in a house that has not changed hands in thirty years.
- The furnace at $3,500 to $8,500.
- The roof at $8,000 to $18,000.
- Depending on the year, knob and tube at $10,000 to $25,000+ or aluminum branch wiring at $2,000 to $5,000.
Use the year instead of the seller
When nobody can tell you what is in the house, the year it was built becomes your best available source. It will not tell you what this particular house has, but it tells you what to go and look for, which is the part you can do yourself in ten minutes.
Start with the year it was built and take the list with you.