Selling a house during a divorce is something nobody wakes up one day wanting to do. There’s a lot of things to overcome mentally and emotionally, let alone legally. You may feel like running away just to get a fresh start and that’s normal during high stress times. Eventually, we all come to grips with the situation and move forward.

How Do You Go About Selling a House a During a Divorce?

The court handles all the court proceedings to make sure we don’t get too ahead of ourselves. It can be a little overwhelming and fast paced. If you’re selling a house during divorce you’ll want to make it like nothing is happening. In other words, keep the house up to date in good working order. You don’t want to destroy items out of feeling good for getting back at your spouse, this can only hurt your chances of what your portion of the proceeds will be.

Coming To Agreements To Sell

The most common sense way to go about selling a house during a divorce in Denver is to put the house on the market and split the proceeds down the middle. Most families with inheritance do this as well. Just so they can all move ahead with life without resentment. This helps everyone in the process from the court, attorneys and other relatives effected by the divorce. It really depends on how you go about selling to and what the current state of the market is.

Speak with a professional in real estate to get an idea of what your home value is. It’ll cost some money but best thing to do is hire an appraiser. Figure out what you’ll need to do to prepare your house for sale at the best price. After this you can go about listing with a Realtor or talking to a real estate investor about selling your house.

Getting The House Ready For Sale

Even though you’re going to be separated now is the time to work as a team the whole way through… Remember you’re both involved in selling a house during a divorce. There is no time to slack. When we mentioned to keep things as if nothing is happening, we mean keep the house staged and some good photos up. You’ll want a positive environment because that’ll transfer on to your prospective buyers.

Moving Forward To A New House

There’s real estate agents and investors that both can help you in any of the situations: Selling the house and splitting the proceeds or selling the house and finding a new place to move into simultaneously. A house sale can have delays and problems for all sorts of reasons without divorce so don’t feel bad if things come up. Do your best to make sure things have step by step so you don’t get ahead of yourselves.

While communicating with mortgage lenders do things as you did the first time. If you did it correctly of course. Speak to multiple lenders and find the best rates and terms before making an executive decision.

What if one spouse wants to keep the house?

Selling a house during a divorce and splitting the proceeds is most common without children involved. One spouse keeping the house is definitely common with children involved. You’ll have to decide to buy the house from your spouse for example or vice versa. A quit claim deed is how they’ll be legally agreeing to cancel their interest in any ownership of the house. One of you will buy the other out of their equity while assuming the current mortgage balance.

To go about buying your spouse out of divorce, you need to contact the lender and request an assumption of the mortgage. Make sure to explain your situation in divorce. Lenders will make sure you are qualified to afford the house on your own and more than likely underwrite you as an individual owner. This is when good documentation of your income of the past years is very important. It’s similar to when you first bought a house.

You’ll need to refinance if the lender won’t let you assume the current mortgage. As of writing this article, interest rates are at record lows so you may get a better rate in the end. Remember, this is the same process as buying any house and you’ll need to qualify all requirements.

If you’re selling a house during a divorce in Denver Colorado, give us a call if you need some assistance or would like to see what your home is worth. We’d be happy to make an offer. Call us at 303-997-2045 or Send us a message today!

Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and pertains to selling a house during a divorce. For legal information regarding the divorce process itself, please seek legal and professional counsel for your situation.