Picture this: your cable box goes dark on a Sunday afternoon, right in the middle of the game. You reach for the phone book — or these days, the search bar — and instead of calling a cable technician, you call a plumber.
He’s a good plumber, mind you. Twenty years in the trade. Licensed, bonded, insured. Shows up on time, shakes your hand, tells you not to worry because he’s “a professional.”
You’d probably still show him the door.
Not because there’s anything wrong with plumbers — heaven knows what would happen to your Sunday afternoon if a pipe burst instead — but because being good at one trade doesn’t make a person qualified in another. Nobody would hire a mechanic to perform a root canal, or a dentist to rebuild a transmission. Nobody would ask an electrician to cater a wedding, or a chef to rewire a house. It sounds absurd because it is absurd.
And yet, when families find themselves untangling an estate after the death of a parent or loved one, that same absurd logic often creeps in — quietly, and with far higher stakes than a broken TV.
When “Real Estate” Isn’t Really About Real Estate
The scenario usually starts simply enough. Mom or Dad has passed away, and there’s a house. Someone needs to sell it. Naturally, the family calls a real estate agent. Problem solved — or so it seems.
Except a house left behind by an estate is rarely just a house.
Walk through the front door of a typical estate property and you’ll likely find decades of accumulated life: furniture, tools, jewelry, firearms, artwork, family heirlooms, business records, three cars in various states of running. Somewhere there are unpaid utility bills, ongoing property taxes, and an insurance policy that needs to stay active. The lawn still needs mowing. The pipes still need to not freeze come winter. And often, there are heirs — sometimes scattered across three different states — who don’t agree on what should be kept, sold, donated, or thrown away.
The real estate agent, however skilled, was trained to price, market, and sell a house – that is all they are qualified. Nobody trained them to empty one first, to appraise Grandpa’s coin collection, or to referee a disagreement between siblings over who gets the china cabinet.
That’s the distinction worth sitting with – the house is only one asset inside the estate. Treating the estate as though it were simply a real estate transaction is like treating a heart attack as though it were simply chest pain — technically related, but missing almost everything that actually matters.
I have sat in Clerk of Courts all around the state where real estate brokers were being disciplined because they threw away $50,000 dollar coin collections, as well as other highly marketable valuables just to chase the commission check of the property.
The Auction Block Has Its Own Rules, Too
The same logic applies on the other side of the process, when it comes time to actually sell what’s inside the house — or the house itself — at auction.
Would you hire an attorney to call your auction?
Almost certainly not, and for good reason. An attorney may understand probate law inside and out, may draft an airtight contract, may be exactly the person you need sitting across the table when legal questions arise. But conducting an auction is its own profession entirely, with its own body of knowledge: cataloging and lotting items, setting reserve prices, photographing and marketing a sale, registering and qualifying bidders, running auction software, managing live and online bidding simultaneously, processing payments, coordinating removal, and — perhaps above all — knowing how to build genuine competition among buyers so that an item sells for what it’s actually worth, not just what the first bidder offers.
This is the very reason many people paint auctions with a broad negative brush, because attorneys are hired to sell property at the courhouse steps, and they aren’t experienced to do so. What happens? Pennies on the dollar. But Real Estate Agents blame the auctioneer – when it’s the attorney.
An attorney doesn’t become an auctioneer because the sale happens to arise out of a probate case. And an auctioneer certainly doesn’t become an attorney because the auction happens to involve an estate.
Not an Argument Against Anyone — Just an Argument for the Right Someone
None of this is a knock on real estate agents or attorneys. Quite the opposite. A properly handled estate often needs both — and an accountant, an appraiser, a title professional, and a cleanout crew besides. Each of these professionals brings real, necessary value.
The mistake isn’t hiring them. The mistake is assuming that hiring one means you’ve covered them all.
It’s the same reasoning that governs medicine. Nobody facing brain surgery says, “She’s a doctor, she’ll be fine,” and stops there. They ask what kind of doctor. They look for a neurosurgeon. The fact that cardiologists, ophthalmologists, and neurosurgeons all carry the title “physician” doesn’t make them interchangeable — and the same holds true across the professions that circle around an estate.
The Better Questions to Ask
Families navigating this process for the first time — and most only do it once or twice in a lifetime — would do well to swap out one kind of question for another.
Instead of asking “Are you a real estate agent?” the better question is: How much experience do you have handling estates specifically including Real Estate In Probate?
Instead of asking “Are you an attorney?” the better question is: How much experience do you have running auctions?
Instead of asking “Are you an auctioneer?” the better question is: How much experience do you have with probate and estate administration?
Credentials matter. Licenses matter. But experience and specialization matter just as much, and in an area as emotionally and financially significant as settling a loved one’s estate, they may matter more.
Who Can See the Whole Picture?
So who should a family actually call?
For legal questions, an attorney who practices in probate and estate law. For tax matters, a qualified tax professional. For selling real property, a competent real estate broker experienced with probate sales specifically. For liquidating personal property, an experienced auctioneer who understands how to turn a houseful of belongings into fair value at the auction block.
And when an estate needs several — or all — of these things at once, the ideal is someone who understands how the pieces fit together: not by pretending to be the attorney, the CPA, or the contractor, but by knowing precisely where their own expertise ends and someone else’s begins. A genuine estate specialist should be able to answer, without hesitation, four simple questions: What do I handle? What does the attorney handle? What does the auctioneer handle? What does the real estate broker handle? And just as important — when is it time to bring another professional into the room?
How should we think about professions?
Nobody would call a plumber to fix a cable box, a dentist to fix a transmission, or a mechanic to perform surgery. The idea is laughable precisely because everyone instinctively understands that a license in one field doesn’t transfer to another.
The same principle deserves the same respect when it comes to settling an estate. A real estate license doesn’t make someone an estate specialist. An attorney’s bar card doesn’t make them an auctioneer. An auctioneer’s gavel doesn’t make them a lawyer.
The best professionals know exactly what they know — and, just as importantly, they know what they don’t. They charge for their knowledge and their experience. When a family’s entire life’s possessions, property, and relationships are on the line, “close enough” is never a qualification to begin with.
Hire the right professional for the right job. Why would anyone hire the wrong specialist to handle an estate?