A Guide to Selling a Home During a Divorce

Here are the five steps to remember if you’re selling a home during a divorce.

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If you’re selling your marital home in the middle of a divorce, there are five steps you must undergo to make the process as smooth and stress-free as possible.

1. Select a Realtor. When there are two parties involved, it’s better to hire a professional third party both sides can agree to be represented by. You can sell the home yourself, but that can lead to one party suspecting the other party isn’t being fair to them. If you were happy with the agent who helped you buy the house, you might consider rehiring them since both you and your spouse agreed on hiring them the first time around.

2. Set an asking price. In this case, it behooves you to follow your agent’s advice—that’s why you hired an agent in the first place. This is particularly important if you’re selling your home in a market that’s not favoring sellers. You want to get the most money you can because you’re likely trying to pay off marital debt or agreed that both parties would split the proceeds and use them to start anew. If you overprice the home it could languish on the market, and if one party is still living there, that can be very stressful. If you price the home correctly, the market will rarely let you underprice it. If a lot of buyers end up looking at your home because they think it’s a good deal, you’ll usually receive multiple offers, which will drive the price up.

 

 

 

3. Prepare the home for sale. If both parties have moved out of the home and it’s vacant, make sure it’s clean. Consider ordering a pre-inspection to see what repairs need to be made beforehand. You never want to be surprised by something the buyer’s inspection uncovers. A pre-inspection report can also give buyers confidence, which will help expedite your sale.

4. Review the offer(s). If you and your spouse are having trouble working together, you might consider getting an attorney involved. Regardless, you do need to work together to choose an offer, particularly if you have multiple offers. Presumably, you both want the cleanest offer with the highest price, but you may be in a market that forces you to choose between the lesser of two evils.

5. Figure out how to divide the proceeds. Generally, you have to pay off the mortgage, pay your Realtor, and then pay your attorney. You may then take the proceeds to pay off marital debt. If one party has been paying the mortgage exclusively because they’ve been living in the house, that party has contributed to the home’s value, so you may need assistance in figuring out how to divide the proceeds fairly. It’s easy for the escrow company to write checks to two different parties; it’s just a matter of asking yourself what you need.

My team and I are well-experienced in handling these types of situations, so if you have any questions about this topic, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to speak with you.