Mom is moving to assisted living. Can we sell her house?

Who can sign the deed

Start with whose signature the title company will accept.

Your situation	Who signs	What the title company will want
Your parent understands the sale and can sign	Your parent	ID. Ask whether it will send a notary to the facility.
Your parent signed a durable power of attorney that covers real estate	The agent named in it	The power of attorney, recorded with the county clerk within 30 days after the deed is filed (§751.151)
Your parent is married and the house is their homestead	Both spouses	Neither spouse can sell a homestead without the other joining (Family Code §5.001)
No power of attorney, and your parent can no longer sign	A guardian appointed by the probate court	A court order; a ward’s property can’t be sold without one (§1158.001)

A power of attorney is durable when it says it is not affected by your parent’s later incapacity, and your parent signed and acknowledged it before a notary or another officer who takes acknowledgments (Estates Code §751.0021). Durable is what lets the agent keep signing after your parent can’t. The statutory form’s real property power includes selling the house (§752.102).

If your parent has dementia and never signed one, talk to an elder law attorney before they sign a deed or a new power of attorney. Whether they still can is a legal question.

Time the sale to the move-in date

Pick which date leads: the move or the closing.

Path	How the timing works	What it costs	When it usually wins
Cash with a leaseback	Close first; your parent stays up to 30 days, then moves	The lowest price of the three	The family needs the money for the move
Cash after the move	About 10 days to close once title is clear, on the date you pick	The lowest price, furniture still in it	The house needs work and nobody can manage it
List	Move first, clean out, show it empty	Payments, taxes and insurance until it sells, plus commission	The house shows well and the family can carry it a few months
Creative: fix-then-list	We front the repairs and get repaid at closing	Nothing up front	It needs a few weeks of work and the family wants retail
Keep it for now	Nothing sells yet	Upkeep on an empty house	Nobody needs the money, and a CPA or attorney says waiting helps

Cash is always the lowest of the three numbers. That’s the trade for speed and certainty, and the sheet shows exactly what it costs.

• The belongings. A senior move manager plans the move and sorts what goes to the new room. Only NASMM members are Senior Move Managers®, and its directory searches by ZIP code. An estate sale company sells what the family doesn’t keep (EstateSales.NET lists them). We buy with the furniture still in it, so an estate sale is optional.
• Deferred property taxes. If your parent deferred taxes at 65 or older, the lien stays, and the deferred taxes build interest at 5% a year until they’re paid at closing (Tax Code §33.06). The deferral runs until 181 days after the tax office delivers a delinquency notice once your parent no longer owns and lives in the house as a homestead. A move to a care facility doesn’t end homestead status by itself, as long as your parent doesn’t set up another main home (§11.13(l)). Ask the tax office before you plan around a deadline.

When RESE buys, J.D. Thorne buys for his own account or through a company he controls, and you get that in writing before any contract. J.D. is also a licensed Texas agent and can list the house instead.

Medicaid estate recovery, the short version

If your parent gets Medicaid long-term care, Texas may ask for money back from their estate after they die. It covers long-term care received after age 55 by people who first applied after March 1, 2005, and the state never asks for more than it paid (Texas HHS). It won’t ask when there’s a surviving spouse, a child under 21, a child who is blind or permanently and totally disabled, or an unmarried adult child who lived full-time in the home for at least a year before the death. It also won’t ask when the estate is $10,000 or less, the Medicaid costs are $3,000 or less, or selling would cost more than the property is worth. A hardship rule can cover a homestead worth under $100,000 when the heirs’ family income is under a limit ($45,180 for one person in 2024, adjusted each year), if the heirs ask and send proof. The MERP line is 800-641-9356.

Selling while your parent is alive turns the house into cash in their name. How that affects Medicaid eligibility is a question for an elder law attorney, before you sign a contract. We don’t give Medicaid advice.

Taxes: selling now, later, or by gift

Ask a CPA before you pick a date. Three things matter most.

1. Selling while your parent is alive. If they owned the house and lived in it as their main home for 24 months of the 5 years before the sale, they can generally exclude up to $250,000 of gain, or $500,000 for a married couple filing jointly. If they can no longer care for themselves, time in a state-licensed care facility counts toward those 24 months, as long as they lived in the house at least 12 months of those five years (IRS Publication 523).
2. Inheriting it. Heirs generally take a basis equal to the house’s value at death (IRS Publication 551), so a quick sale often shows little gain. But the power of attorney ends at death (Estates Code §751.131), so the sale waits until someone proves who owns the house; see selling an inherited house and probate.
3. Deeding it to the kids first. A gift carries your parent’s old basis into the child’s hands (Publication 551). On a house bought decades ago, that can mean more taxable gain than either of the other two. Medicaid also looks back 60 months before a long-term care application. A gift in that window can leave your parent ineligible for that care for a period (42 U.S.C. §1396p(c)).

Questions people ask

Can a power of attorney sell property in Texas?

Yes, if it’s durable and grants real property powers, which include selling (Estates Code §752.102). The agent signs the deed, and the power of attorney gets recorded in the county too (§751.151).

Can we sell Mom’s house if she has dementia?

If she signed a durable power of attorney while she could, her agent can sign. If not, and she can’t understand the sale now, the usual route is a guardianship, and the probate court has to authorize the sale (§1158.001).

Can we sell the house to pay for assisted living?

Yes. We close the cash path in about 10 days once title is clear, on the date you pick, and your parent can stay up to 30 days after closing on a written leaseback.

Will Medicaid take Mom’s house?

Estate recovery is a claim against the estate after your parent dies, never more than Medicaid paid (Texas HHS). The exemptions and the hardship rule above can stop it.

Do we need a lawyer?

For a guardianship or Medicaid questions, yes: an elder law attorney. The State Bar of Texas Lawyer Referral & Information Service can point you to one, with a first consultation of up to 30 minutes for no more than $20. Dallas and Tarrant callers get sent to their county’s certified referral service instead. Areas we serve lists where each county hears probate cases.