Can a Trustee Sell the House in a Trust?

1. Can a House in a Trust Be Sold?

Yes. Florida law gives every trustee the powers over trust property that an unmarried, competent owner has over property in the owner’s own name, and it lists the power to sell property, for cash or on credit, at a public or private sale. The trustee needs no court order to use it. The trustee’s general powers and the specific powers are set out in full on our Trust Code pages.

The trust document can narrow that power. A trust that leaves the house to a named child, or says the house is not to be sold while a surviving spouse lives there, controls over the statute. A trustee who sells a house the trust told the trustee to distribute in kind is acting outside the document and answers for it.

Who signs depends on timing. While the grantor of a revocable living trust is alive and serving as trustee, the grantor signs the deed as trustee and sells the house like any owner. After the grantor’s death or incapacity, the successor trustee signs.

2. Who Legally Owns the Property in a Trust?

The trustee holds legal title to property in a trust, and the beneficiaries hold the right to benefit from it. A deed into a living trust names the trustee, such as Jane Smith, as Trustee of the Jane Smith Revocable Trust, and the public records show the trustee as the owner. Our guide to who owns the property in a revocable trust covers what that means for taxes and creditors while the grantor is alive.

Because the trustee holds title, the trustee signs the listing agreement, the contract and the deed. The beneficiaries do not sign. A beneficiary’s protection is the trustee’s duty to act for all of them, to get a fair price, and to show every dollar in the trust accounting.

3. Do All Heirs Have to Agree to Sell Property in Florida?

For a house held in a trust, no. The heirs under the trust are beneficiaries, and a Florida trustee with the power of sale can sell over a beneficiary’s objection. The objecting beneficiary’s remedy is to go to court and show the sale breaches the trust or the trustee’s duties.

For a house outside a trust the answer is different. When a house passes to three children as co-owners, whether by a deed or after probate, each child owns a share and all of them sign to sell the whole house. A co-owner who refuses can be forced into a court-ordered sale only through a partition lawsuit, which our partition guide explains. A house still in probate is sold by the personal representative under the will or a court order, covered in our guide to selling a house in probate. Keeping the house in the trust until it is sold is one of the practical reasons families use a trust in the first place.

4. What Does the Title Company Need From the Trustee?

The title company usually asks for four documents.

1. The recorded deed into the trust, which shows the trustee holds title.
2. A certification of trust, signed by the trustee, stating that the trust exists, who created it, who the current trustee is, that the trustee has the power to sell, and that the trust has not been revoked or changed in a way that makes those statements wrong.
3. A certified death certificate or resignation for any prior trustee.
4. On a homestead, proof of who survived the grantor, because a spouse or minor child can change who owns the house.

Florida lets the trustee give the certification instead of the whole trust, and the certification does not need to show who inherits. The buyer and the title insurer may rely on it, and a buyer who deals with the trustee in good faith and pays value is protected even if the trustee later turns out to have misused the power. When the deed into the trust itself grants the trustee the power to sell, Florida also tells buyers they need not look behind it. A trustee who received the house from the grantor is not required to buy title insurance until the house is sold, which is the point when the buyer’s title company checks the chain of title.

5. Can a Beneficiary Force a Trustee to Sell Property?

A beneficiary cannot force a sale directly. A beneficiary cannot list the house or sign a contract for it. A beneficiary can ask the trustee in writing to sell or distribute, and if the trustee refuses without a good reason, the beneficiary can ask a Florida court to compel the trustee, to remove the trustee, or to charge the trustee for the loss the delay caused. Our guide on how long a trustee has to distribute assets covers when a delay becomes a breach.

The beneficiaries can also settle the question among themselves. Florida allows the trustee and the beneficiaries to resolve a trust question in a signed agreement without going to court, such as directing the trustee not to sell or confirming how the house will be handled, so long as the agreement is one a court could properly approve.

6. Can a Trustee Sell Trust Property to Himself?

A trustee can buy trust property only through a narrow set of exceptions. Florida makes a sale of trust property to the trustee personally voidable by any beneficiary it affects, meaning a beneficiary can have it undone, unless one of these applies.

• The trust document authorizes the trustee to buy.
• A court approves the sale.
• The affected beneficiaries consent in writing after full disclosure.
• The grantor consented in writing while the trust was still revocable.
• The beneficiary waited past the deadline for suing the trustee.

Florida also presumes a conflict when the trustee sells to the trustee’s spouse, descendants, siblings or parents, or their spouses, or to a company the trustee has a stake in. A son serving as trustee who wants to buy out his sister’s half of their mother’s house should get an independent appraisal and his sister’s written consent, or a court order, before closing. Our page on the duty of loyalty lists every exception.

7. What If the House Is a Florida Homestead?

Two homestead rules can stop a trustee’s sale. During the grantor’s life, a married grantor’s homestead cannot be sold without the spouse joining in the deed, and that protection follows the house into a revocable trust. The spouse signs the deed along with the trustee.

At the grantor’s death, Florida treats a homestead held in a revocable trust as if the grantor still owned it. If the grantor leaves a spouse or a minor child, and the trust gives the house to anyone the Florida Constitution does not allow, the gift fails and title passes outside the trust at the moment of death. A surviving spouse then holds a life estate, or an elected one-half share, and the grantor’s descendants hold the rest. The trustee no longer owns the house and cannot sell it, and a sale needs the signatures of the new owners. When the grantor leaves no spouse and no minor child, the homestead stays in the trust, the trustee can sell it under the trust’s terms, and a general power of sale in the trust does not expose the homestead to the grantor’s creditors. Our guides to the homestead in a revocable trust and to the homestead rules in the Trust Code cover both situations.

8. What Happens If a House Is in a Trust and You Sell It?

The sale proceeds belong to the trust. The closing check is payable to the trustee, the trustee deposits it in a trust account, and the money is then held or distributed under the trust’s terms like any other trust asset. The trustee reports the sale, the price and every closing cost in the next trust accounting.

The tax result depends on whether the grantor is alive. While the grantor of a revocable trust is alive, federal tax law treats the grantor as the owner, so the grantor can use the home-sale exclusion of up to $250,000 of gain, or $500,000 for a married couple, if the ownership and use tests are met. After the grantor’s death, the house takes a new basis equal to its value on the date of death, so a sale soon afterward at that value produces little or no gain. The step-up in basis guide works through an example.

What Does It Cost?

Administering a trust after a death, including the sale or distribution of the house, is a flat fee quoted at consult. A deed moving a house into a trust is a flat fee from $550, and a Complete Trust Plan with the trust, the will, the power of attorney, the health-care documents and the funding deed is a flat fee from $3,200, and $4,500 for a couple. Recording and other government costs are additional and passed through at cost. Advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the posted date. Stopping a sale, undoing a self-dealing sale or removing a trustee is litigation, which we quote per matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The brother who wants to keep the house. A mother’s trust splits everything equally between a son and a daughter, and the son is trustee. He wants to buy the house. Because a sale to himself is voidable, he orders an independent appraisal, sends it to his sister, and closes only after she signs a written consent to the price.

The sister who wants the house sold now. A trustee has held a vacant house for 14 months while the taxes, insurance and lawn bills come out of the trust. A beneficiary sends a written demand to list the house, and when nothing happens she asks a court to compel the sale and to charge the trustee for the carrying costs.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §736.0815(1),(2) (powers of an unmarried competent owner, subject to fiduciary duties); §736.0816(2),(22),(24),(25) (sell at public or private sale; distribute in kind; sign instruments; wind up); §736.08105 (annotated) (no title insurance required until a sale).
• Fla. Stat. §736.1017 (annotated)(1),(4),(5),(6) (certification of trust; dispositive terms not required; reliance); §736.1016 (annotated)(1),(2) (protection of persons dealing with a trustee); §689.073(1)-(3) (powers conferred on a trustee in a recorded instrument; no duty to inquire).
• Fla. Stat. §736.0802(1),(2),(3)(a),(9) (duty of loyalty; voidable self-dealing and its exceptions; presumed conflict with family and affiliates; special fiduciary); §736.1001 (annotated) (remedies for breach of trust, including compelling performance and removal); §736.0111 (annotated) (nonjudicial settlement agreements).
• Art. X, §4(c), Fla. Const. (homestead alienation joined by the spouse; limits on devise); Fla. Stat. §§732.4015(1),(2), 732.401(1),(2) (homestead in a revocable trust; descent to spouse and descendants); §736.1109(1)-(3) (homestead held in a trust).
• 26 U.S.C. §121(a),(b) (home-sale exclusion); Treas. Reg. §1.121-1(c)(3)(i) (residence held in a grantor trust); 26 U.S.C. §1014 (basis at death). Tax information, not tax advice.
• Case retold below: Dowdy v. Dowdy, 182 So. 3d 807 (Fla. 2d DCA 2016). The trust predated the Florida Trust Code and the court did not apply §736.0602 (annotated). Opinion read in full; retrieved September 30, 2026.

When the Heirs Do Not Get a Vote

In one case I have reviewed, a stepson asked a title company to split a sale check with him and learned from an appeals court that he had never had a seat at the table.

A husband and wife in a second marriage set up a family trust in 2006. He had three children and she had two. The couple served as trustees together, the trust named one of his sons and one of her daughters as co-trustees to take over upon the death of each of them, and after both died the property was to be sold and split into fifths among all five children. The husband died in 2008. Three years later the widow amended the trust to remove his children as trustees and as beneficiaries, and then sold the last piece of real estate. His son asked the title company to pay the proceeds to the widow and him jointly as co-trustees, and the title company paid the widow alone. The son sued, and the trial court froze $100,000 of the proceeds in the court registry. The appeals court reversed. Read as a whole, the trust meant the children stepped in only after both spouses had died, so the widow was the sole trustee when she sold and had full authority to use the trust property for her own benefit.

In reviewing Florida cases on trustees and trust real estate, I have a few take-home points.

The first is that the trustee’s signature is the one that counts. The stepson was a named successor, a remainder beneficiary and the husband’s son, and none of that gave him a right to approve the sale while the widow served alone.

The second is the wording on succession. The phrase that decided the case could be read two ways, and the family spent years finding out which. Avoid any successor clause that does not say plainly whether the next trustee steps in at the first death or only after both.

The third is the blended family. A couple with children from earlier marriages who want each side protected after the first death should decide that at the drafting stage, whether by making the deceased spouse’s share irrevocable, naming a co-trustee from the other side, or both. An owner can build in whichever protection fits the family, and every Complete Trust Plan I prepare, flat fee from $3,200, asks that question for a second marriage.

One limit is worth stating. The appeals court decided only who was trustee on the day of the sale. The court did not decide whether the widow’s 2011 amendment cutting out her stepchildren was valid, so the opinion leaves open what the husband’s children finally received.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on September 30, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.