Standing in a parent’s house surrounded by forty years of furniture, most people assume the contents are worth far more than they are.
For a typical UK home, contents come out at around £8,000 to £25,000 at open market value, and plenty land at the bottom of that range.
But you can’t put an average in a tax return. You have to evidence your own house, in the right order. Get the order wrong and there is nothing left to value.
What HMRC is actually asking you for
One figure, one date: the open market value of the goods on the day the person died, meaning the price they would reasonably have fetched if sold on the open market that day. That test comes from section 160 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984, and everything else here hangs off it.
Notice what it rules out. Not what the item cost new. Not what it is insured for. Not what replacing it today would cost.
Second hand, worn and unfashionable is the condition you value things in, and every personal belonging is an estate asset that gets reported whether or not any tax ends up due. With the nil rate bands frozen until April 2031, ordinary estates are being caught more often than they used to be.
Why your instinct about the value is wrong
Most people put second hand values far too high, and the gap is wider than it feels. Sold prices on the open market tend to look something like this:
- A six month old John Lewis two seater sofa that cost £976 new: around £100
- A Georgian longcase clock: a few hundred pounds
- A 0.7ct platinum solitaire bought new in 2020 for £6,250: around £1,250
- A used iPad Pro that had an RRP of £1,119: around £220
- A working Bosch washing machine from around 2012: about £40, against £250 to £400 to replace it
These are illustrative, not a valuation of your own items: check completed sales for the exact piece, in the condition it is actually in.
Insurance schedules are the biggest culprit, because they list replacement cost, which runs at roughly twice resale. A ring insured for £5,000 might fetch £2,000 to £3,000 on the open market.
I see the same move in probate purchases again and again: the family digs out the contents insurance schedule and hands that total over as the probate figure. It is the most understandable mistake going, and it only ever runs one way, upwards.
Executors are far more likely to overpay inheritance tax on contents than to underpay it.
What counts as “contents”
The legal term is personal chattels: tangible movable property, excluding money or securities for money, anything used solely or mainly for business, and anything held solely as an investment (section 3, Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Act 2014).
In a normal house, that means:
- Furniture, electricals, china, glass, silverware and clothing
- Jewellery and watches
- Vehicles, caravans, boats and personalised number plates
- Works of art and collections: coins, stamps, wine
- Cash kept in the house, and any cryptoassets
Then look beyond the house. Items in bank safe custody, pieces a relative is holding, anything moved out when they went into hospital or a care home: all still estate assets.
Finally, read the will and the contents insurance schedule for named pieces. If the will leaves a brooch to a niece and there is no brooch, it was probably given away in life, and you want to know before a beneficiary asks.
Value first, clear second
This is the part good executors get wrong while doing everything else right.
Clearing the house feels like progress. It is the one job that visibly moves, the family wants it done, and you are worn out. That pressure is exactly what causes the mistake.
So photograph before anything moves. A wide shot of each room, then close ups of anything with a maker’s name on it, including the things that look like junk. Loft hatch up, drawers open, garage door open.
Once the van has gone there is nothing left to value and nothing left to photograph. You are then defending a number from memory, personally, possibly years later. HMRC can ask to see how you worked out the value of assets up to 20 years after inheritance tax is paid, and beneficiaries ask too, long after the estate is closed.
But don’t let it drag: what an empty house costs
Waiting is not free either. Two deadlines, one on insurance and one on council tax, come round faster than most probate timelines.
Most standard home insurance policies restrict or void cover after around 30 consecutive days of vacancy (Alan Boswell Group). Tell the insurer straight away and arrange unoccupied or probate cover, or a leak in month three may not be covered.
Council tax is kinder. The Class F exemption means nothing is payable from the date the liable person died until the grant, and for up to six months after it, even if the house is still furnished (House of Commons Library). After that, normal liability resumes and empty home premiums can bite.
Stopping the council tax doesn’t make the house free, though. Utilities, keeping it heated through winter so damp doesn’t take hold, security checks and unoccupied insurance run to roughly £300 to £400 a month in our experience.
We bought a three bed mid terrace in the Midlands from a seller who had inherited it. It had been empty eight months by the time they called, with council tax, insurance, utilities and clearance costs adding up the whole time.
We exchanged within a week and completed 28 days later, which stopped the bleeding. Give the valuation weeks, not months.
The room by room inventory, done properly
For most houses this is a Saturday morning, not a project.
- Work room by room. Loft, garage, shed and the car on the drive included.
- Record what it is. Description, maker or model, rough age, condition, and any paperwork you find with it.
- Price the notable items from sold prices, not asking prices. GOV.UK’s own instruction is to work out what you would have got if you had sold them, and completed listings on online marketplaces are exactly that.
- Screenshot the evidence with the date visible and file it next to the photo of the item.
- Use a used car price guide for vehicles, adjusted for mileage and condition.
- Sweep the rest into one line: “general household contents”, one figure.
You do not itemise the mugs. The job is to catch the handful of items that carry real value and give everything else one honest total.
Getting things valued: the routes and what they cost
Some items can’t be evidenced from a laptop. These are the options side by side.
| Route | Typical cost | Right for |
|---|---|---|
| Your own research, evidenced | Free | Furniture, electricals, clothing: most of the house |
| Remote valuation from photographs | From around £300 | Several notable items and no time to research them |
| Specialist, per item | Jewellery and watches £50 to £150, art £75 to £200, antiques home visit £100 to £300, classic cars £150 to £400 | Anything that might cross £1,500 |
| RICS Red Book valuation | £279 to £500 | The property itself, a separate job from the contents |
Indicative 2026 market rates, not quotes: Avery Associates, Probate Value, Compare My Move
Notice what’s missing: the free auction house valuation. An ordinary semi now crosses the inheritance tax threshold while the furniture inside is worth very little, so there is nothing in it for the auctioneer any more (Today’s Wills and Probate).
One rule with no exceptions: never use a house clearance quote as your probate figure. Clearance firms price bulk liquidation and the labour of taking it away, which is not open market value.
Pay for an opinion on jewellery and watches, art and antiques, collections, vehicles, high end furniture, and anything you genuinely cannot price. That is a short list, not the whole house.
Where the figures go in 2026
If a guide tells you to fill in an IHT205, close it. That form stopped applying to deaths on or after 1 January 2022, and pages ranking today still recommend it.
Where the figures go now depends on the estate:
- Excepted estate (most estates, no tax to pay): the values are declared as part of the probate application itself. No separate contents form.
- Full account: IHT400, with IHT407 “Household and personal goods” attached.
IHT407 has four boxes: individual jewellery items worth £1,500 or more, itemised; vehicles, boats and aircraft; antiques, works of art and collections; then one total for everything else. Jointly owned goods go on IHT404 instead.
You will still see £500 quoted as the jewellery threshold on solicitor pages. It came from an older version of the form. The current figure is £1,500.
Under the threshold never means don’t report. The threshold only decides whether an item gets its own line or joins the general total, and whether a professional valuation is needed at all.
How accurate does it actually have to be?
The standard is reasonable care, not expertise. You are not expected to be a valuer, only to take sensible steps and show your working, so keep the photos, the inventory, the screenshots and any written valuations in one file.
A low figure is fine when it is evidenced. £40 for a working washing machine looks absurd next to the few hundred pounds it costs to replace one, and it is still the right number.
One convention to bin: “probate value is market value minus 10%”. The test is the open market value on the date of death, not that figure with a discount applied. Ask a valuer for an open market valuation, not a “probate valuation”.
If you think you’ve got it wrong
HMRC’s own inheritance tax toolkit calls valuations “the biggest single area of risk” on an IHT400, so they do look. The better news is that mistakes are recoverable, and the route depends on timing.
- Before the grant: call HMRC’s inheritance tax helpline and tell the Probate Registry. At that stage a corrected figure is a correction, not a penalty.
- After the grant: use form C4 Corrective Account, matching the descriptions and original values from the IHT400. Wait until the values look settled, then submit one C4 covering everything rather than drip feeding changes.
Penalties follow behaviour rather than the size of the error, and telling HMRC before they ask is treated far more favourably than being found out. That matters, because the liability can land on the executor personally.
Already cleared the house? You are not the first. Reconstruct honestly from phone photos, family pictures with the furniture in the background, receipts, the clearance paperwork and what you genuinely remember. Then write down how you reached each figure and date the note.
And if you rushed the clearance to make the house saleable, you probably didn’t need to. Most of the run down houses we buy just need clearing and a light refurbishment, and we take them as they are.
On one probate purchase we surveyed the property, paid for searches and cleared the enquiries while the grant was still being processed, so when probate completed we bought within 48 hours. That needs everyone ready, but the sale end can move fast once the valuation is done properly.
Questions executors ask us
Do clothes have to be valued for probate?
Yes in principle, because clothing is a chattel. In practice ordinary clothes go into the general contents total at second hand value, which is usually very little. Designer pieces, furs and genuine vintage are the exception and get looked at separately.
What if the items sell for more than the probate figure?
That happens, and it is not automatically a problem if your date of death figure was reasonably reached and evidenced. If a professional’s figure looks well out, ask them to reconsider it, and correct the return if the original figure was genuinely wrong.
Will selling the items later trigger capital gains tax?
Sometimes, which is why an artificially low figure bites twice: the date of death value becomes your base cost. Gains are exempt where gross proceeds from a chattel do not exceed £6,000, with marginal relief above that, and wasting chattels such as cars, clocks and watches are generally exempt.
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Inheritance tax and probate are complex. This article is general information, not tax or legal advice. Property Rescue buys residential property for cash in England and Wales and is regulated by the FCA for Sale and Rent Back only (FCA Register 522471). For advice on your own estate, speak to a solicitor, an accountant or HMRC.
