Hi, I’m Beth with TB Properties Buys Land. Today, I’m going to discuss a topic that’s been coming up over and over again with many people who’ve been calling in and are eager to sell their land. What they find out is that they don’t have full ownership of their property. What they’re finding out is that they have undivided interest. So what does it mean when you’ve got undivided interest of a property? Undivided interest is a term that’s used to discuss different types of property ownership, usually where one or more people own land or they inherit land together. So now the situation with this is that this group of people, they may not have equal shares to their property. You may have somebody with 25.43% and another person with 1%. Even though all these people may not have equal shares of the property, they do have equal right to use the property.
So in a situation like this, it’s possible that you could load your family up in the car, go out to the property to use it for the weekend, and find out another family who’s got ownership of the property is out there enjoying the land as well. Now is this likely to happen? Maybe not. Who knows? But that’s just a scenario that could happen. So now even though all owners, all people who have interest in the property have equal right to use the property, when it comes to selling the land, when it comes to making any decisions regarding the land, all owners of the property have to be in agreement.
For example, let’s just say that you’re ready to finally sell this property. If you find out you only have a percentage ownership of this property, you have undivided interest, you have to locate everyone else who has interest in this property and be in agreement to sell the property. This is why I hate undivided interest. I hate when people are ready to sell their land and they find out that they’ve only got 1.37% ownership, and they’re devastated. They’ve been paying property taxes on this forever.
Now with that said, I am not a lawyer. I’m not a real estate attorney. TB Properties Buys Land, we are not real estate attorneys either. So we cannot give you any kind of legal advice regarding selling your property. Every state has different laws regarding property sales and this sort of thing. Sometimes there are legal remedies that allow you to sell your property in cases like this. Sometimes there are, sometimes there are not. I will let you know that we have worked with a few cases of undivided interest and have been able to buy the property from these people. These cases are unique. We’ve had to work with them, all the owners, and we’ve had to work through a title company to remedy some of the Title issues. There has been paperwork to be done, but not all cases can you sell your property with divided interest if don’t know everyone who’s involved. It can be complicated.
One way to know whether you’ve got undivided interest is if you look at your property tax bill, if you look at the legal description, oftentimes you’ll see “UNDIV”, and they’ll tell you the percentage, 34.86% or something is what they’ll say. And that will tell you almost immediately when you have undivided interest. There are other ways to find out as well. If you’ve got any questions, if you’ve got land that you’re interested in selling, you think that you might have undivided interest but you’re not sure, feel free to reach out. We’re happy to help you and answer any questions that you might have.
If you have undivided interest and you know the other interest holders in the property, then you have a really good chance of being able to sell the property if everyone can be in agreement to sell it for a certain price. We have been able to work that kind of situation out before. Thanks again for tuning in and please reach out if you have any questions. At TB Properties Buys Land, we purchase rural vacant land, recreational land, residential land. Give us a call, shoot us an email, reach out across our website. We’re happy to help. Thank you.