This is mostly hypothetical, as my sister and I plan to sell the rental property we inherited from our father as soon as the current tenant dies (any day now). But if we didn’t see eye to eye and one of us wanted to sell and the other wanted to put it back on the rental market, and we couldn’t come to an agreement, what happens? Does one party sue the other to buy him/her out and proceed without the other? Does the age of the siblings come into play (like, the oldest gets to cast the tiebreaking vote)?
All parties must agree or they have to buy each other out for the fair market value of their share. The process will vary by state and may require an independent arbitrator to become involved, again depending on you local laws.
Age of the siblings is moot, generally only the oldest tries to play that card. It means nothing except in the context of nobility and royal families. I’m assuming that you are not the Earl of Homie. 
If only.
If the property owners can’t come to an agreement, the courts can order a “partition,” which compels the owners to sell the property and divide the proceeds.
You go to court to force a partition sale, which will cost both of you a very significant amount of money to the point its is highly encouraged you solve this person to person. Forcing a partition sale through the courts is basically mutually assured destruction.
This thread reminds me of my friend who has spent his last five years doing little else than try to settle his father-in-law’s estate that he is the executor. The problem is his sister-in-law who lived rent-free and income-free with the father and feels she has inherited the right to go on doing so. Other heirs disagree and want to sell the property and divide the proceeds. As I said, this fight has been going on for five years and they don’t want to go to court.
Sister and you both own an equal amount. You buy her half or she buys yours. Whatever the future of the property is (rental, sale, destruction) matters not at all. Do you want to keep it? Does she want it? Kind of like a divorce, if you cannot agree, you probably end up selling it and splitting the money. Or you both could let legal fees eat up the equity value of the home until you both walk awary with very little.
This is the only part of the OP that matters. If you cannot agree on a disposition, one party sues the other for a partition sale. Short of that, you’ve agreed to something, even if it’s not what you (or the other party) really want. Rock/paper/scissors, steel deathcage match, one buys the other out at any agreed price (could be based on FMV, could include a kicker as an inducement, or a reduction for any number of reasons), even waiting until the other person dies: all are some form of an agreement, or at least a settlement.
I recall a property me and the sibs inherited from our parents, and question of % ownership was attempted to be debated. One sibling claimed that the % should be split according to the number of grandchildren rather than the number of children our parents had. Guess who had generated the most grandchildren and guess who didn’t generate any.
Not rental property, but after widowed mother died, one son made a deal with someone to buy the waterfront home for a nice chunk of change. Then he tried to persuade his 3 sibs to let him buy them out for considerably less than their quarter portion of the potential sale. Fortunately, one of the other sibs was executor and refused the “generous” offer, but it still took a while and some legal wrangling to get the estate settled. I don’t think any of the three speak to the wheeler-dealer brother any longer. (Not my family, but some in-laws.)
Now I’m curious. If Bob and Bill inherit ownership of a property, especially an income-generating property, can Bob sell his share to someone else? Can Acme Property Management and Storm Door Company and Bill then co-own the inherited property?
It’s possible depending on how Bob and Bill hold title. Some forms of ownership have severable interests, while others are of the entirety. If ownership is severable, either may sell his interest without input, knowledge, or consent of the other. If it’s by the entirety, then no. This is about all I’ll say because it’s starting to sound like legal advice, which should really come from an attorney.
These types of problems between siblings are a huge reason why parents should not leave their property to be jointly owned. Either give it to one child in their name only or specify that it is to be sold and the proceeds divided equally. If it’s jointly owned, there will inevitably be conflicts about how the property should be managed, used, and sold. These conflicts often create deep resentment that can have long-lasting, negative consequences to children’s relationships.
It’s best to avoid dealing real estate with family. The money involved is big enough that people get weird. With family, we hesitate to get ruthless when the situation calls for it. With a stranger, if the seller leaves their junk behind, you can charge the escrow for the dumpster. For someone you know, you feel obligated to ask them to please pick up their stuff.
You have no idea. The whole situation is a clusterfuck. So, the house was Grandma and Grandpa’s – Dad and all of his siblings grew up there. When Grandma and Grandpa died, Dad somehow convinced the family to deed it over to him – something widely regarded by just about everyone as a giant swindle, but hey, that was 25 years ago. Dad let his niece, my cousin, Crystal live there rent-free as long as she pays the property taxes. Since then, Aunt Marsha (Crystal’s mom, Dad’s sister) and Uncle Danny have moved in, and I imagine Crystal’s kids and grandkids come and go as well.
So Dad dies, and the property, by default, goes to me and my sister. So here we are, unwitting landlords. Neither of us wants Aunt Marsha and her family to be homeless, so Sis and I have decided to let Aunt Marsha live there until she dies (which likely isn’t much longer), and then we’ll have to figure out what to do with Crystal & family. THEN, we’ll either sell it or maybe I’ll buy out Sis and live there. Probably we’ll sell.
That sounds like a huge mess. There’s a lot to work out that has nothing to do with the property being jointly owned. You and your sister should probably meet with a real estate attorney to find out your legal options. Perhaps even to set some ground work to make this easier:
Because they have lived there so long, they probably have some rights to live there. If Crystal doesn’t agree to leave, you’ll probably have to go through eviction. If you go down that path, it needs to be done in a legal manner or else things can get a lot more complicated. Hopefully she’ll leave and you won’t have to worry about all that. I don’t know a lot about the process, but I think if the property is being sold then it’s easier for a landlord to get the current tenant out. Selling the house might also create less problems with Crystal. If you kick her out and move in yourself, there’s going to be a lot of resentment. But if you sell the house “because you need the money”, there’s less for her to get upset about.
Who pays for the expenses of the house, like utilities and maintenance?
Yeah, that’s sort of the mess my Grandma left our family. She had a Summer House at the end of Long Island near the Hamptons and her Regular House in suburban Long Island. The Summer House she divided among Mom, Aunt, and Uncle 1 while Uncle 2 (who never really worked a real career to speak of) got Regular House (which he pretty much had always lived in anyway well into adulthood).
The Summer House is more or less a “tontine” (a investment structure typically more appropriate for murder mysteries and allocating stolen Nazi gold) where as family members die, their share is more or less distributed to the surviving members or their descendants.
As of now, my Mom and Aunt have died so the house is owned by my Dad and Uncle 1. Uncle 2 sold Regular House and lives in Summer House paying a nominal rent while helping to maintain it. So that works out.
Given that my brother an I are the only children on that side of the family, eventually the Summer House will presumably fall to us. Aunt’s husband apparently isn’t in the line of succession or whatever but apparently Uncle 1’s wife and family is, which my create a bit of a snag.
Eventually my brother and I need to figure out what to do with this house. We like the idea of it but as a practical matter, we only get to go there like once or twice a year.
My aunt is not on speaking terms with my uncle, and is barely in speaking terms with my mother, because she (1) started helping grandpa make payments on the condo (which he owned as a rental property), (2) started making more than the minimum required payments to try and pay it off early, (3) used her own money to do at least some of that (and she even asked me to help pay off the last few thousand dollars, ostensibly so grandpa, who would be dead within a year, could have the satisfaction of knowing he’d “completed” something—I was in law school at the time, not a lawyer, but I knew enough that I didn’t want to touch that with a ten foot pole), and (4) convinced grandpa to deed it over to her shortly before he died, seeing as she had put her own money down (far less than the value of the property, mind you) to help him make payments (many of which were, again, extra payments to try and pay off the mortgage sooner, not required minimum payments).
In aunt’s defense, she was acting as grandpa’s caregiver for the latter years of his life, up until he moved to a nursing home in the last year or two (although I suspect uncle would dispute whether she was primary caregiver, given how much closer his home was to grandpa’s).
Crystal/Aunt Marsha pay for everything. I have no idea what condition the house is in, as I haven’t been inside there in 20 years, but Sis went there to talk things over with Aunt Marsha a few months ago and she said it looked surprisingly good, although we have no way of knowing, from where we sit anyway, of any structural problems or anything like that.
For the love of Christ, people: Leave. A. Will.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with Mrs. Homie and her mother:
ME: Hey Judy, do you have a will?
JUDY: sighs mournfully No, I do not.
–a few days later–
MRS H: Mom told me that the reason she doesn’t have a will is because she has a bunch of money that she doesn’t want found out about or she’ll lose some government benefits or whatever. Thousands. So she’s put a few hundred here and few hundred there across her house.
ME: Well, fuck, is she going to leave a map?
If they’ve been paying for upkeep, then that can complicate your ability to do anything with the property. They could say that the agreement with your dad was that if they pay for everything they can stay as long as they like or that they’ll get the house when he dies. You’d have to take them to court to get it resolved. The significant amount of money they’ve spent on taxes, maintenance, insurance, and utilities will back up their argument. If you force them to leave, you might have to reimburse them for what they’ve spent. Taking them to court will be a major headache, take a significant amount of time, and cost a significant amount of money. The simplest way to deal with this situation might be to sell them the house at discount. Hopefully you and your sister will be in agreement about what to do or else that will add a whole 'nother layer of complexity and hassle.