Co-owners are fairly common with real estate. The most common example of this is when two people are married, and they own a home together. But you also have joint business owners who hold real estate together, real estate investors who may purchase homes or plots of land simply for the value, and much more.
Ideally, the two sides will always agree on what to do with their property and when to sell it. But this ideal is not always met. What happens in a situation where you want to sell a piece of real estate that you own jointly with someone else? You cannot sell it out from under them without their permission. But you may feel like this is hindering your investment opportunity and costing you money. If you can’t get them to come to your side and there are no compromises to be made, what are you going to do?
A partition action may be necessary
In some cases, you may need to go to court. What the court can do is use a partition action. This is a legal process of dividing property.
If you were dividing financial assets or other types of physical property, things might go fairly smoothly. But in terms of real estate, there’s no real way to divide that asset without selling it. What will happen is that the court may have to force a sale of the property and then work to divide the earnings from that sale between both property owners.
Of course, if you are on the side of wanting to keep the property, this may be detrimental to your vision. But if you’re just trying to sell and your co-owner is holding you back, this can be a way to work toward your goal. It’s important to understand exactly what legal steps to take any time a dispute arises between two joint owners.