Meet the Brave Americans Buying and Selling Their Homes, despite Stubbornly High Interest Rates
Elsa Ortega and her husband are expecting a child at the end of October, and they closed on a home in El Paso, Texas, this summer. But when they thought about selling their three-bedroom single-family home for a larger three-bedroom house, they initially were hesitant.
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Spouses who divorce or who are widowed are also more likely to sell their homes, experts say.
“In divorces, if the parties cannot agree as who will buy out the other party’s interest or cannot agree upon the fair market value of a home, then they will end up either agreeing to sell, or a court will direct that the residence be sold,” Lois Liberman, a New York-based partner at law firm Blank Rome, told MarketWatch.
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“Much of the time, the equity in the marital residence represents one of the largest assets of the marital estate,” she added. One party may not have enough money to buy their estranged or former partner out, so they need to sell, or they may just decide to both sell and each buy a new property where they can start fresh, she added.
It may also be a revenge sale. In some cases, Liberman said, the divorcing parties “cannot stomach seeing the other retaining the residence and, thus, would rather rely upon the vagaries of the market and see a third party live there,” she said. “That sentiment of, ‘If I can’t have it, you can’t either’ is real.”
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"Meet the Brave Americans Buying and Selling Their Homes, despite Stubbornly High Interest Rates," by Aarthi Swaminathan was published in MarketWatch on September 15, 2023.