I seem to have seen rather a lot of people on their way to funerals over the 2008 Christmas period.

In fact, slightly closer to home, my first wife's mother died on New Years Eve and the old chap next door died on New Years Day.

My father died when I was 23 and my mother 10 years later, so I have no real concept of what it is like to have an elderly parent.

Some of my professional colleagues have buried a parent in recent years and others are coping with the onset of dementia.

My wife's mother is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with and, as I report honestly on this site, I categorically state that I don't like the woman, we don't get on and she is something of a problem in a number of respects, including marital harmony.

The circumstances of her divorce, many years ago, means that I now have the financial responsibility to provide her with somewhere reasonable and decent to live and I consider the financial burden of those costs to be to the current detriment of my own children's living standards. That hacks me off!

There will be no future inheritance but, perhaps, there will be some future capital growth in the investment value of the home that I provide for her.

Read into that what you will, but I believe that I have made my point clear.

Many more people care about their parents and help them to move into more manageable homes in their later years, often ground floor flats or bungalows. Many parents stay in their homes but, in those latter years, tend not to maintain or improve.

I have carried out many private surveys on the homes of a deceased parent or grandparent, my Clients instructions invariably including the hope or expectation that I will provide them with a Survey Report that they will then use to re-negotiate the purchase price to an even lower figure, to give them more of a margin on their proposed improvement costs.

I know that Estate Agents are very keen to receive instructions from Solicitors to sell Deceased Estate property, because they know that they will be pricing slightly lower than the norm for an early sale and there is generally good demand from the market.

What I don't understand, as a professional Surveyor & Valuer, is why the Beneficiaries of the Estate, by which I mean the people who will be receiving their allotted share of the proceeds of sale, don't consider tidying the house up or maybe doing a few cosmetic improvements to make it just a little bit more presentable and, by such means, improving its value.

There are some rare occasions when someone will ring me up and ask me to come out and have a look at their late mothers or fathers house and give them some advice. 

In those rare cases, I can generally come up with a reasonable cost scheme of work that can be carried out to rectify some obvious repairs, smarten the place up and, in most cases, provide a satisfactory lift on value that is above the cost of the improvements.

This seems to be a sensible approach, but a course of action that very few people take up.

Anyway, something to think about if you are ever in the situation of having to contemplate sale of a Deceased relatives home.

If you want to talk about this, a phone call costs you nothing and Surveyors, like me, are generally quite happy to have an informal chat and see if we can help.