If you’re going through a divorce and you’re trying to sell a house, you might be wondering, “what if my house won’t sell during a divorce in Los Angeles?” That’s a good question to ask so be sure to read this blog post and we’ll share our best answer with you…
- Divorce can be very stressful and expensive, particularly in a city such as Los Angeles.
- While deciding to sell your house in divorce, reach and maintain an agreement on price, timeline, and how proceeds are split, to help agents and buyers facilitate a sale.
- Consider how much privacy matters and if listing your house on the public market brings unwelcome questions. If so, consider selling to buyer like Fair Sale Homes.
A divorce can be a challenging and stressful situation: it’s complicated, it’s expensive, it’s time-consuming, and emotions are running high. And in all that effort you also need to sell your house so that you can split the value of any equity in the house and put it all behind you. But what if your house doesn’t sell? If you’re going through a divorce and wondering, “what if my house won’t sell during a divorce in Los Angeles?” then here’s what to do…
What Are The Reasons Your House Doesn’t Sell?
Unfortunately, there are many reasons your house might not sell. Some of the reasons are related to the normal market conditions (and they might be present even if you weren’t going through a divorce). But there might be additional reasons that your house doesn’t sell — for example, maybe you have a complicated divorce or there’s a lot of conflict between each party in the divorce and this makes it too difficult for the buyer to negotiate on the sale of the property.
During a divorce, being on the same page about the intent to sell is important in order to avoid waster the agent’s time and the potential buyer’s time.
List of things to consider, and hopefully, agree on and stay consistent with
- How much do you want to sell the house for? Is price more important than time?
- How quickly would you like to sell your house to conclude the divorce process?
- How much of the cash proceeds will each person in the divorce receive?
We recommend that home sellers who are going through a divorce get those questions above answered between the two of you (or through your attorneys), especially if you’re selling your Los Angeles home through the traditional selling process. You want to avoid more conflict and indecision once the agent has brought prospective home buyers into the picture. More importantly, you want to avoid delays once the buyer has signed a purchase agreement and placed their deposit in escrow. At that point, the buyer is all in to close on the house, and they expect you to be as well.
This Delay Adds To The Problem!
If the house is not selling as quickly as you’d like, this just adds to the problem and it ultimately ends up costing you more — in bills and taxes and mortgage payments, as well as in additional attorneys fees. On top of those costs, if one or both of you is not living in the house, you may be incurring rental costs somewhere else as the house sits vacant. The longer it takes sell this house in the divorce, the bigger of a negative financial impact it will make on both of you.
Simply put, you might be hoping to get a high price for your house but your divorce could actually be scaring people away and costing you money. You should anticipate that home buyers and agents will ask why you want to sell your house.
- Do you both want to keep the sale (and divorce) a private matter?
- Related to privacy, are you both comfortable with the property listed for sale on the MLS, Zillow, Redfin, and broker website?
- Related to privacy, are you both comfortable with a For Sale sign at the front of your house? Neighbors and passers by will be curious.
Fortunately there’s another option…
Strategy For Divorce Houses: Sell To A House-Buying Company
Here’s an effective strategy for people who are trying to sell their divorce house — instead of listing the house with an agent, sell the house directly to a real estate buying firm like us here at Fair Sale Homes. As real estate buyers, we may not always be able to pay the market price for a house… but many divorcing people realize that holding out for a higher price can actually be a costly strategy once you factor in the cost of repairing the property, the carrying costs while you wait months for an agent to find a buyer, and then the agent’s commission (sometimes thousands of dollars). In addition, by selling your house to a house buying company, your privacy is protected. Unlike the traditional selling process, your house will not be listed on the open market through an agent. There is no public aspect such as open houses and showings. The parties involved are the decision maker (you and your spouse) and the buyer, in this case Fair Sale Homes.
If you’re wondering, “what if my house won’t sell during a divorce in Los Angeles?” and if you want to sell your house fast, a real estate buying firm like ours is the fastest and simplest choice to get the property out from the middle of your divorce, give you money for it, and allow you to wrap up this portion of the divorce proceedings.
To learn more about our real estate buying program and how we might be able to help you out in this challenging situation, click here and fill out the short form or give our team a call at (626) 863-7006.
WE BUY HOMES across cities Southern California. A sample of cities where we buy homes for cash: East Los Angeles, Lincoln Heights, Silver Lake, Atwater Village, Van Nuys, Northridge, Pacoima, Panorama City, Harbor City, and Wilmington. Also, we buy apartments in Los Angeles, CA. Whether you are experiencing home foreclosure, code violation, failed property sale, or simply have an unwanted property, we will work with you to find a solution.