inherited property/considering selling

Give us some more information.

Do you have any debt?
What's your and your spouse's income?
Does your mother have any money to contribute to her housing?
What sort of special accomodations does your mother's residence need to have?
Will she be living with you/your family?
Where do you/your mother currently live?
What's wrong with it?
How much could you get for this property?
Why do you want to invest for "shorter term gains?"
How much property is it?
You want to sell some of it, or all of it? Why?
How quickly do you think it would sell?

If your father just recently passed, I'd hold off on making any big decisions. (Especially in this real estate market)

if he's selling it for about the FMV, he shouldn't be taxed on selling the land. it's basis is set as the FMV when his father died, which was "recently." if that was this year, i doubt the FMV has increased that much

A little background info: mom got west nile virus in '03. coma for 3 months, on ventilator for 1yr. she is not mobile, has a little use of her arms, can feed herself on her own but that's pretty much it. dad died in June and mom broke her hip last week b/c the lift we use to move her from bed to chair tipped over. I want to improve her quality of life by doing what i can to make everyday life easier on her as well as us.

debt: car/truck, my house, which is going on the mkt soon. everything at mom/dads place is paid for

spouse and my income: approx 70K/yr together
mother gets SSI also on medicare/medicaid

special accommodations needed: ceiling track lift system, handicapped bathroom facilities, wheelchair van.

wife and I are moving in with her to give care.
Mom's ssi check pretty much covers the utilities there.

We have 28 acres in DS off of Brown Rd. Was thinking about selling about 8 acres. I could sell this portion and not feel like i lost anything b/c we don't really use it. judging by past (2007) market value of 50K per acre if i sold the 8 acres, that's 400K. Could solve a lot of problems with that. About the short term gains, I was talking about letting the money sit in a safe place like a savings acct and make money off of the interest but after some calculations the gains wouldn't justify it.

Also there is one other problem concerning this. When dad died, his half interest in the place went straight to me (only child). The other half is still in mom's name. This presents a problem with estate recovery from medicare/medicaid. I have a lawyer checking on the proper way to get the land out of mom's name and into mine w/o affecting her benefits. I would hate to sell my portion and build on her's only to have the gov. come and take it away upon her death to recoup the $ they spent on her care.

It is likely to occur after the elections in November. It will be interesting to see how they write the laws with respect to the due dates for filing the returns and paying the taxes. How does the IRS go after an estate that completed probate and distributed all assets? The IRS can't hold the executor of the estate liable since the executor followed the law and received the blessing of the court that all liabilities of the estate had been satisfied.

It is one thing for Congress to change the income tax laws retroactively within a tax year since taxpayers can take corrective actions. But how can you change a law with respect to someone who cannot respond? Given that the amount of taxes involved can be quite large for some estates (Steinbrenner's estate would have to pay hundreds of millions), you can expect any retroactive changes to the estate tax laws to be litigated all the way to the Supreme Court.