No. You can start marketing an inherited property immediately, but completing the sale requires the acte d’hérédité immobilier to be registered and all heirs to consent (Notaire.be, 2026). Listing early while the deed is prepared saves weeks without breaking any rule.
Many heirs assume the whole estate must be wound up before a single property can be touched. It need not be. There is a useful distinction between marketing a property and completing its sale. You can put an inherited home on the market, receive offers and even sign a preliminary agreement while the estate’s administrative steps are still under way. What you cannot do is finalise the notarial deed until ownership has been properly transferred to the heirs and everyone entitled has consented.
The gating item is the acte d’hérédité immobilier, mandatory since 2022, which registers the passage of the property to the heirs; registration is free within six months of the death (Notaire.be, 2026). The notary can prepare this in parallel with the marketing, so it rarely needs to be the bottleneck people fear. Inheritance tax is a separate obligation with its own Walloon filing deadline, and while it does not have to be fully paid before you sell, it must be declared, and the duty is often funded precisely from the sale proceeds. The counter-intuitive takeaway: starting early does not jump the queue illegally, it simply overlaps steps that heirs wrongly believe must run one after another.
Two consents anchor everything. All co-heirs in indivision must agree to the sale, and where a usufruct exists, the usufructuary must sign alongside the bare owners for a full-ownership sale. Getting these alignments in principle early, even before the deed is finalised, is what lets an accepted offer convert smoothly into a signed agreement.
So the honest answer is that the estate does not have to be fully settled, but two things must be in place before completion: the registered inheritance deed and the unanimous consent of the owners. Overlapping the marketing with the paperwork is standard, sensible practice and typically shortens the whole timeline by weeks.
At a glance
| Stage | Can you do it before the estate is settled? |
|---|---|
| Market the property, hold viewings | Yes, immediately |
| Receive offers | Yes |
| Sign a preliminary agreement | Yes, subject to consents |
| Register the acte d’hérédité immobilier | Required before completion (Notaire.be, 2026) |
| Complete the notarial deed | Only after deed registered and all heirs consent |
| Pay inheritance tax | Declared on the Walloon deadline, often funded by the sale |