If a real estate property has two owners (50/50) can one of them sell their half interest to a third party?
I recognize that the answer may differ by jurisdiction (I am in Ontario), but wonder if there is any general principle that might apply.
It is also possible that the answer may depend on the specifics of the deed to the property, but let’s assume it was as generic as possible (if such a thing exists).
The situation I am imagining is when a residential home is mutually owned by husband and wife, or two cohabiting friends, etc. Can one of them sell their share to someone other than the co-owner?
Thanks.
There are 2 main ways to divide ownership of a piece of land.
Joint tenants means that all owners own the whole property and none can sell their share independenly of the others.
Tenant in common means that all owners own a specified share of the property and can sell their share independently.
Joint tenants are often relatives like a married couple or a group of siblings. Usually ownership is automatically transferred to the surviving joint tenants when one of them dies.
Tenants in common are often businesses that want their ownership to be clearly specified. The share may be 50/50 or some other share structure that adds up to one.
tl/dr depends on the type of title but yes for tenant in common titles.
Thank you. That clarifies a lot!
Google “petition to partition” without the quotes.
A weak answer, I know. But recently a friend of mine wanted out of a joint ownership (50/50) of a condo he never really wanted any part of. This was Mass. All it took was one call to an attorney, who drafted a letter outlining the laws, and basically an ultimatum that we could do this the easy way (sell and split proceeds) or the hard way (go to court).
The other owner consulted a lawyer and decided to agree to sell and split proceeds.
(It’s a long story, and I still don’t understand it. But my friend is a naturalized US citizen. His father somehow bought the condo with my friend as a 1/2 owner, and expected my friend to take all the care and feeding responsibilities. I don’t see how that’s possible without my friend’s participation, but apparently it was. Nonetheless I believe the story because the attorney that did the work is a mutual friend; when the relationship became irreparably estranged my friend wanted out)
As @74westy points out, there are two entirely separate “generic” ways of owning property together with another person such that each has an interest in the whole part. Generally if two spouses own something, it’ll be as joint tenants, and in that case it’s specifically called “Tenants by the entirety” but that’s not really relevant other than if you see that phrase you’ll know what it means and that it’s the default method of titling something in two spouses’ names in general. People that buy things as a business venture will effectively always do it as tenants in common, as they want to be able to sell the interest without interference from the other person.
It’s possible under a joint tenancy to sell the joint tenant right to someone else, but this requires approval of the other joint tenants, and effectively ends the previous joint tenancy and creates a new one, so it’s more like A and B sell their property to A and C; A just happens to be the same person in both joint tenenacies. You may also have the other tenants agree to break the joint tenancy to allow one of them to sell their share to someone else without recreating a joint tenancy.