How to Sell a House During a Divorce

Selling a house when getting divorced is not all that different from any other home sale. What is different in a divorce house sale is that the homeowners are more likely to disagree about day-to-day factors which affect how well the home will perform on the market. Due to this, some pre-listing planning should occur which I explain here.

More important to how to sell your house during a divorce is strategy. I have included my strategy for selling a house when divorcing. This strategy is designed to increase the odds of getting the things most divorcing home sellers want: the highest price, a fast sale, and a buyer with few to no contingencies.

Establish Priorities When Selling a House When Getting Divorced

The first step to selling a house because of divorce is establishing your goals from the home sale. Divorcing home sellers should be thinking about planning around four main items.

1. Getting the Best Price – I think all homeowners want the highest price the market will pay for their home. However, overpricing your home negatively affects its final sale price and greatly slows the sale process. Both homeowners need to agree on a reasonable, justified listing price.

2. Receiving Seller Favored Terms – Determine what if any terms you will need or want from a buyer. Examples include avoiding buyer requested repairs. Post-closing possession can be helpful in many divorce situations, too. An offer with fewer contingencies is an easier sale for you, too.

3. Speed of Sale – The third common consideration is speed. Many home sellers want the divorce and selling the family home to be over quickly. Determine how fast you want the home to sell. The answer to this can be affected by the final item, though.

4. New Living Arrangements – Homeowners who are selling the marital home during a divorce need to find somewhere else to live. Home sellers should avoid causing a longer escrow or closing period. Don’t make your inability to find a place to live the cause for delaying or extending the closing.

Decisions to Make When Divorcing and Selling Your House

A divorced couple selling a house should accommodate the circumstance of a divorce which can negatively affect your priorities and goals for the sale. There are three areas of concern which divorcing home sellers should address.

Possession

In a divorce house sale, decide who will live in the home. This person should be the one answering showing requests. Adjacent to this is who is responsible for maintaining the home. Assign with clarity who will be living in the property and who will be maintaining the property or what that division of labor looks like.

Moving Items Out

Divorce houses for sale are easy to spot. If one spouse will be leaving the home you can negatively affect the home’s appearance and sale performance by taking too many things out of the home. Sparsely furnished homes do not perform as well on the market compared to fully furnished homes. If one spouse is leaving both parties should be encouraged to leave as many furnishings as possible in the home.

Make Time for Negotiations

Both homeowners need to be readily available to answer and negotiate a submitted offer. Both of you need to be ready to constructively participate. Yeah, you two aren’t getting along right now. Regardless, homebuyers want their offers answered promptly. Do not overcomplicate the process of reviewing and responding to offers.

Choosing a Real Estate Agent

Everyone knows a real estate agent. His fishing buddy’s brother or her co-worker’s sister. Don’t hire either one of them. Instead, hire an outsider. This is how you will get truly objective representation without concern of one side favoring the other.

If you are selling a house due to divorce in Northwest Indiana feel free to contact me. My all-inclusive listing service comes with a low real estate commission fees. My team and I have a track record of selling homes faster and for more money than other Northwest Indiana REALTORS®.

Your Attorneys

Your real estate agent can communicate with each of your attorneys. The attorneys will communicate with the real estate agent and the title company about any requirements of the sale due to a court order or other conditions of your divorce. The most common instruction we hear of is related to either how sale proceeds are to be disbursed, what is to be paid off with the proceeds, and possession of the home.

Strategy When Selling Your House in a Divorce

If your search for how to sell a house during divorce is because you are looking for a strategy here it is. Earlier I mentioned three items home sellers in a divorce typically want: a fast sale, few to no contingencies, and a high price. Following these steps when selling your house in a divorce will make all of that more likely.

Make Your Home Easy to Buy

Divorce and selling the marital home is easier with a strategy. All day long about selling your home and what you want. Instead, think about how you can make your home easy to buy. Us salespeople have a saying, “people hate to be sold, but they love to buy.” It’s true. Here is how you make a home easy to buy.

Increase Your Home’s Aesthetic Sentiment

When in a divorce and selling the house, improving the home’s aesthetic sentiment will speed up the sale and deliver a higher price. Aesthetic sentiment is the feeling you get from an image. You need to illustrate your home as aspirational to homebuyers. Make homebuyers want it. This means to make them want it.

• The right decor, furnishings, organization, and colors are important
• Great photography by a professional real estate photographer
• Do the little things to make a home look more expensive

Answers to All Questions

Providing an abundance of information to homebuyers is likely to result in a fast sale with fewer contingencies. It also front-loads a lot of what’s necessary resulting in the divorced couple selling the house not relying on each other so much throughout the selling process. Here are some recommendations:

• Complete a pre-listing home inspection – Complete a home inspection with a home inspector before listing the home. This should include a general home inspection, pest inspection, radon inspection, and well water quality and septic tests if applicable. Your agent can advise you on what items should be fixed. Once you made the repairs, have the inspector come back out to update the report. Make this report available to homebuyers during showings.
• Get a land survey – Complete a survey of the lot. A survey location report is typically sufficient. This is where the corners are not marked and is lower cost. Make the survey available to prospective homebuyers. Your county records office might have one already which will save you time and money.
• HOA or POA documents – If your home is located in a POA or HOA get the documents and have them ready for buyers to review.
• Records for major repairs or replacements – Provide details about any major repairs or the replacement of high cost items such as a roof replacement, septic work (if applicable), appliances, or HVAC equipment. An invoice or scope of work from the vendor is excellent documentation.

Make Your Home Easy to Show

Home sellers need to make their home available and easy to show. Blocking out too many days and times complicates the situation. Instead, you want to be as accommodating as possible to homebuyers’ schedules. Also, consider having an open house. This provides an opportunity to get a lot of buyers through in a small amount of time.

Create an Excellent Showing Experience

Home sellers should provide a clean, organized, and inviting environment with no mishaps. Let’s talk about mishaps, first.

Mishaps are distractions or unpleasant experiences during the showing. Mishaps include difficult to work locks, burglar alarms going off, noticeably uncomfortable temperatures, loud barking dogs or too friendly cats. Icy steps and snow are a nuisance, too.

Home sellers can easily create a clean, organized, inviting environment by cleaning up their house. All you need to do is these things:

• Clean your house
• Take out the trash because it could stink
• Remove pets and put away pet toys or beds because they can smell
• Cut the grass, rake the leaves, and pick up any toys out of the yard
• Put everything in its place, be organized
• Thin out the stuff in your home

Pricing

The most common error among home sellers is overpricing their home. Overpriced homes get low activity, few offers, and low offers. If you want the divorce and selling the home to move along, put a reasonable price on the home. For readers who think, “Well, buyers can make an offer” I am here to tell you that you are wrong.

You need to sell how buyers want to buy. Buyers have become less confrontational and less willing to negotiate. More and more consumers have grown up in an economic landscape where negotiation doesn’t much exist any more. Instead, they’d rather pay the listed price once they believe it is a fair price. But, if buyers disagree with your list price your home sale will falter.

I work as a real estate agent in Northwest Indiana. It’s a region just outside of Chicago home to about 900,000 people. Below is a table of actual data from Northwest Indiana real estate sales in 2022 showing the relationship between days on market and the sale price per square foot.

List your home at a reasonable, justified price. If it’s priced too low the market will bid it up for you.

Conclusion

Selling a house when divorcing is not too different than selling a home under any other circumstance.

Divorcing homeowners’ answer to how to sell a house during a divorce means establishing their priorities and making decisions about how they hope the sale to go.

Homeowners selling the house due to divorce should focus more on how to sell your house during a divorce strategy. Divorcing home sellers can benefit from a strong divorce home sale strategy. This is done with a paradigm shift and focusing on how to make your home easy to buy.

If you are selling a home in Northwest Indiana I can help you. I offer low real estate commission fees with my all-inclusive home selling service. I lead a team of Northwest Indians REALTORS®, and we have a track record of selling homes faster and for more money when compared to other NWI real estate agents.