Hey, Berks County. April, with Berks County House Buyers. And today, I’m going to talk to you about what to do if you need to sell your house or one spouse wants to come off the house if you’re going through a divorce.
This is obviously a very sad and very tense time. And there’s a lot of questions that we get asked. We recently were working with a homeowner who was going through a divorce that was not so friendly. And I’m going to talk about some common questions he asked us when he called for his free consultation to see if he could sell his house quickly to get the divorce over with.
The first question was, does my spouse have to approve the sale of the home? And the answer is, it depends. If both of you are on the deed, then both of you have to sign off to sell the home. Sometimes what happens is we see both spouses on the mortgage, for the loan for the house, and only one of the spouses is on the deed. Whomever is on the deed has to sign off to sell the property. And all our settlements are done with a title company, just like it would be with a regular real estate agent. So whether you’re selling on the market with an agent during the divorce or selling to Berks County House Buyers cash for ease and speed, either way, whichever parties are on the deed, those are the people that have to be at the settlement table.
The next question we often get asked, if I’m going through a divorce and I want to stay, but my spouse wants to leave, how can I keep the house? I don’t want to sell the house. I want to keep the house. This is pretty common if you love the neighborhood you live in, or you had the kids and they’re going to that school. It’s difficult to find houses for rent and other houses for sale. So a lot of times people don’t want to uproot their whole life more than they already are during the divorce process. And the answer to this question is you can get someone off the deed to a house. And this is typically done by doing what we call a refinance. So, the person that wants to stay on the deed and own the property by themselves would have to qualify by themselves without their spouse’s income to get the house refinanced. And during the refinance, that person would keep the house, since they’re on the deed, and the other spouse would come off the deed and they would get a chunk of money from the equity that has built up in the home.
Sometimes there’s no equity in the home. And the only option during the divorce is to sell the home, and any proceeds that there may be, if there’s any at all, is to split those proceeds at settlement. Because both names are on the deed, we often get asked, what if the title company writes a check to both of us? Unfortunately, they probably will cut a certified check to both spouses. And then the spouses need to take that check to the bank and split that money evenly.
Sometimes when spouses are going through a divorce, the house is in need of a lot of repair or a lot of clean out, and they don’t want to do this. And they end up calling us so that they can sell the home quickly. All the same things apply. Both spouses still need to sign off on the home, or if we can help refer you to someone that can take you through the refinance process, if you can qualify, sometimes the spouses just want the cash that’s in the home that they built up equity quickly so they can sell the house quickly and start their life over quickly somewhere else.
The homeowner that we were working with called for a free, no obligation consultation during the divorce he was going through, and we were happy to walk him through all the steps in the process. We’d be happy to walk you through all the steps as well. You can give us a call at 610-816-6205, or check out our website, berks610.com. If you are going through a divorce situation in Berks County and need to sell your home so that you can both move on with your lives or one of you is on the deed and you just want to move on with your life quickly and get some cash to go rent something or go buy something else, we would love to help you and tell you what your options are. Feel free to give us a call or check out our website for your free, no obligation consultation in Berks County.