personal finance

Can my brother force me to sell our late father's cottage?


Q My brother and I inherited a cottage from my father. The cottage is of great sentimental value to me and I would like to keep it as a holiday home. My brother just wants as much money as possible from his inheritance. I’d like to buy his share, but we are unable to agree on a price. I obtained a surveyor’s valuation on the cottage, which valued the property at £120,000. My brother claims that the cottage is worth £250,000 which is supposedly based on an estate agent’s estimate. The property needs about £45,000 of structural repairs and another £40,000 spending on modernisation.

My brother has refused to negotiate with me and now wants to take me to the county court to force a sale of the house and its contents on the open market. Will the property be auctioned or put through a normal estate agent if he is successful? Will I be able to bid for the property? Can I stop him artificially inflating the price with bogus bids via his friends and family?
PN

A You may be thrilled to hear that your brother can’t force you to sell your father’s cottage. The sale of a property inherited by more than one person cannot be undertaken without the agreement of all – or both in your case – the owners of it. If you and your brother each own a distinct share of the property (and so are tenants in common) your brother can go ahead and sell his share without your permission but he would be very unlikely to find a buyer (that wasn’t you) who was willing to invest in a portion of a house jointly with someone unwilling to sell his or her share (you, again). What your brother can do, however, is ask a court to order a sale. But he can only do this after he has formally written to you (and any other co-owners if there are any) – or get a solicitor to do the writing – setting out his case for selling the property and giving you the chance to reply with the reasons that you don’t want to. Your brother would have to make a very compelling argument for the court to come down on his side. Given that you have offered to buy him out, the court may also refuse his request to force a sale on the grounds that there is already a solution in place for him to get at the cash value of his share in the property.

You may be less thrilled to hear that I’m not convinced that you are approaching “negotiations” with your brother over the possible sale price in a particularly fair-handed manner. I can see that using a surveyor’s valuation of the cottage works in your favour. But it is more reasonable to use an estate agent’s view of what the property would fetch on the open market. (this simply means open to all potential buyers and does not mean that the property will necessarily be put up for auction). Perhaps it would be more fruitful to ask your brother to name three estate agents that he would be happy to trust to give a reasonable valuation and then take it from there to find a figure that he would find acceptable for you to buy him out.



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