If you’re going through a difficult divorce and trying to figure out what to do about your unwanted real estate, then keep reading this blog post to give you our best suggestions about selling your house while divorcing in Chicago…
Divorce can be challenging and emotional. Yet, in the midst of the difficult situation, you might be like other divorcing couples who own a house and are trying to figure out how to go about selling your house while divorcing in Chicago. Here are our best strategies and ideas to help you navigate the real estate portion of your divorce as carefully and efficiently as possible.
Houses In Divorce Can Be Complicated
During a divorce, the two parties seek to split their assets in half.
This means you’ll make a list of all the assets owned by both parties and determine the value of each asset. You’ll then divide all the assets evenly to each party which is straight forward for highly liquid assets such as cash or stocks. If you have $100 in your bank account right now, then sending each party $50 and calling it a day is a pretty simple task.
However, when one of the assets owned by the parties is real estate then the quick split it in half isn’t an option. Since you are dealing with a tangible asset there is no straightforward way to split the asset evenly amongst all parties.
Here’s How To Split The Real Estate Asset
The best way to split the real estate asset is to sell it:
The property itself might have some expenses incurred during the sales process, or there might be outstanding bills, or there might still be a partial outstanding mortgage on the property. So the two divorcing parties should probably just sell the property and direct their attorneys to apply the money earned from the equity to any outstanding debts.
The remaining amount can then be split between each party, with each party getting an agreed-upon percentage (such as 50/50).
But this begs the question — how do you sell the property?
The Fastest Way To Sell A Divorce House
When it comes time to sell, most people think of selling through a real estate agent. Unfortunately there’s a few problems with this:
- the agent will make the owners pay out-of-pocket to fix up the property first — but who pays for that?
- the agent will then list the house, which can take 3-6 months to sell (sometimes longer) — can either party wait that long?
- the agent will then involve both parties in the negotiation with the buyer and there is A LOT of paperwork to shuffle back and forth
Selling your property through an agent can add a significant amount of time to the completion of your divorce. The problem is that you never know how long it will actually take you to sell the property and you’ll also have to deal with the hassle of getting your house “show ready” and making all of the repairs. Some sellers find it incredibly frustrating to be stuck from moving forward with their new life because the property they have is delaying the finaliztion of their divorce.
Fortunately, there’s another way to sell and that’s to sell your house to a real estate buying firm (which is what we do here at Blue Ladder Development). The real estate buying firm will buy your house quickly, for cash, in as-is condition (and as a bonus, there are never any commissions or fees to pay). You don’t have to clean up or fix up the property and the sale can be completed in days, not months, with very little paperwork.
If you’re going through divorce and want to just be done with it and move on with your life, just reach out to us and tell us about the house you want to sell. We specialize in buying divorce houses and we can help you expedite your divorce by buying this house from you.