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This is all very new to me. My last breakup was easy since it was my house so she just moved out. This time, I'm married and we both own the property.
I have not yet had a chance to speak to a divorce solicitor and not going to get a chance for a couple of weeks so at the moment I'm just reaching out to anyone who has any experience with this to try and save my sanity.
We decided to divorce. It's mutual. We get on ok for now. No kids.
We own the house outright and both put in roughly the same amount to buy it. Neither of us can afford to rent anywhere or buy without first selling the joint property.
I need to stay local due to my job. She works remotely and only has to go into he office once or twice a week.
The tricky part: she has a problem with alcohol and I fear the house will be neglected/damaged if I was to move out long term. I do a lot of work to maintain the house.
Any ideas welcome.
Don't move out till it's sold would be my ( uninformed) suggestion.
I would say that living amicably in the same space has a very limited life expectancy. And you should be making attempts to be out of each others space sooner rather than later, before giving it the chance to go horribly wrong. heard quite a few recent examples of this, stuff turns petty and then nasty.
No idea how i would manage if i needed to do this. id be trying to sort temporary arrangements ASAP for both parties so the house can get on the market
sounds like a relatively quick sale is needed, is it on the cards to agree to undercut the market by a little to get it sorted sooner and not prolong things?
When in a similar situation, the previous MrsIHN and I remained living together whilst the house was on the market. I guess we were lucky in that there was no bad feeling, it was just a relationship that had run it's course and we kept it civil so it was okay. We were going to split the equity 50/50.
The market was unfortunately very slow (this was 2009, financial crash days) and after a few months she'd found somewhere she really liked so in the end I bought her out with a slightly, but not maliciously, lowball offer. The maths went something like below (not the exact figures but you get the picture)
- House is up for sale for £190k
- We owe £130 on the mortgage
- We'd get £30k each in equity if we sold at that price
- I offered her £20k, which is the equivalent of us selling at £170k, i.e. 10% under asking price.
EDIT - I/we also had in the back of our minds a guy I knew from work who had gone through a painfully bitter and acrimonious split, where both sides had, at one point or another, needed a good slap for acting like petulant children. We were determined we were not going to be like that. It worked to keep the whole process as pain free as possible for both of us and I'd recommend, if you can, having a conversation with your wife to see if the pair of you can agree to do the same.
Does the patio require any maintenance?
Can you look at a property auction sale rather than putting on the general market and waiting for a buyer?
This would I assume be far quicker as no chain, buyer needs available funds etc. (at least that's my understanding) so it could all be done in a few weeks. Even if you didn't quite get the amount wanted, there is a cost (literally and psychologically) on spending perhaps 6 months trying to sell while navigating the personal side of things too.
Alternatively can one of you rent somewhere, with an agreement on how that's funded i.e. one of you moves out and rents, you combine that cost plus the running costs of your current shared household and split it down the middle so nobody loses out (or rather you both lose the same!)?
Obviously that depends on one of you being happy to live in a rented place while the other stays in the house, and that the house will be kept in good saleable condition by the other which it sounds like you're not convinced about...
Unfortunately we need a decent price on the house. We only bought it just over 3 years ago so even if it went for the same as what we paid, we will still be making quite a big loss with all the fees and stamp duty.
Sharing the cost to rent somewhere os a good idea so ill look into that.
