You Inherited a House With Other People — and Somebody Won’t Sell

Every page you have read so far ends the same way: file a partition action. That is a lawsuit against your own family, it runs on the court’s calendar rather than yours, and the fees come out of the house.

Before anyone goes there: Maryland and the District both rewrote this law recently, and a co-owner who does not want the house sold now has a route the older articles miss. This page sorts every move into three groups — what you can do alone, what needs every owner’s signature, and what only a judge can do.

Investors: we don’t publish or sell heir lists, and we don’t name anyone from a probate docket. This page is for the family that owns the house.

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The Permission Line

When a house passes to several people at once, they hold it as tenants in common. Each owner has an undivided fractional interest — a percentage of the whole house, not a specific bedroom. That single fact produces almost every argument that follows, because it means some decisions are yours alone and some are nobody’s alone.

Most of the confusion in these families comes from putting a decision in the wrong band. People fight for months over something one of them could have done unilaterally in a week, or they wait for a sibling’s blessing on something that never needed it. So start by finding the line.

Band One: What You Can Do Without Anyone’s Permission

You can sell your own share

A tenant in common may convey their own undivided interest. You do not need your brother’s consent to sell what belongs to you, any more than he needs yours. What you cannot do is sell his share along with it — a buyer of your interest steps into your position as a co-owner, with the same fraction and the same headaches you had.

That is why this is the least-discussed move in the category and also the most misunderstood. It is genuinely available. It is also genuinely a smaller thing than selling a house — you are selling a minority position in an asset somebody else is living in or arguing about, and the price reflects that. Anyone who tells you a fractional interest fetches its proportional share of the full market value is selling you something.

We can sometimes purchase an individual heir’s interest directly. Whether that works depends on the title, the other heirs’ rights under state law, and the numbers — tell us what you own and we’ll tell you straight whether it’s something we can buy.

The middle condition is the one people miss, and it is the reason this cannot be answered over a form. In Maryland and the District, the other heirs may hold a statutory right to buy that same interest at appraised value before any court-ordered sale.

Virginia has no equivalent right — it reaches co-owner buyouts by a different route, set out further down. So which state the house sits in changes what an interest is worth to a buyer, and sometimes changes whether a purchase makes sense at all.

You can stop paying for a house you don’t control — carefully

Co-owners commonly discover that one of them has been carrying the taxes, the insurance and the roof repair while the others contribute nothing. Those payments are not charity and they are not lost.

In a partition, what each owner put in is one of the things a court weighs when it divides the money. In Virginia it is written into the statute directly: contributions to taxes, insurance, maintenance and improvements, alongside how long each party has owned or lived there and any ancestral attachment to the property.

The practical point is to keep receipts, not to stop paying. An unpaid tax bill does not punish the sibling who refuses to sell; it attaches to the house and comes out of everyone’s share, yours included.

You can find out what the house is actually worth

Most of these standoffs are not really about whether to sell. They are about a number. One heir believes the house is worth far more than it is, usually from a listing site estimate, and refuses anything below it. Getting a real figure in front of everyone — one nobody in the family produced — resolves a surprising share of these on its own.

Band Two: What Needs Every Owner’s Signature

Selling the house itself — the whole thing, with title a buyer’s insurer will actually cover — requires every owner of record to sign. There is no majority rule among tenants in common. Three siblings out of four is not enough, and no percentage of ownership lets one owner convey another’s interest.

This is the wall people hit, and it is worth being precise about what sits on the other side of it. A missing signature does not merely slow a sale down. Until that signature exists or a court supplies its equivalent, there is no transaction to close, and the carrying costs keep accruing against everybody.

One thing that is not in this band: if the estate has not been settled and a personal representative is properly appointed, the sale may run through the estate rather than through the individual heirs. That is a different mechanism with a different set of rules, and it is the subject of its own guide — see our probate section for how an estate sale works and who has authority to sign.

Tell us what you own and who else is on the deed. We will tell you straight what we can and can’t do with it.

Band Three: What Only a Court Can Do — and What Changed

When co-owners cannot agree, any one of them can ask a court to divide the property. That is a partition action, and it is what every other page on this subject will tell you about. What most of them have not caught up with is that Maryland and the District rewrote the rules for family-inherited property, and the rewrite runs in the opposite direction from the thing people fear most.

The old fear: one heir forces a sale on everyone

The classic complaint about partition is that the co-owner who wants out has all the leverage. They file, the court finds the house cannot be physically divided — which is nearly always true of a single-family home — and it goes to auction, often at a price that suits nobody. The family loses the house and the equity in one motion.

Maryland, since October 1, 2022

Maryland added a new subtitle to the Real Property article — Chapter 402 of the 2022 Laws of Maryland, codified at Real Property §§ 14-701 through 14-713 — that applies when the property is heirs property. The statute defines that term precisely: real property held in tenancy in common where, as of the filing, there is no record agreement among all cotenants governing partition, at least one cotenant acquired title from a relative, and any one of three ownership tests is met — 20% or more of the interests held by relatives, 20% or more held by someone who got title from a relative, or 20% or more of the cotenants being relatives.

If the property qualifies, the sequence changes. The court first determines the value of the whole parcel — by appraisal, unless every cotenant agrees on a value or the court finds an appraisal would cost more than it is worth. Then, and this is the part missing from nearly every article on the subject, the court notifies the parties that any cotenant who did not ask for the sale may buy out the ones who did.

The price is fixed by statute rather than negotiated: the appraised value of the whole parcel multiplied by the selling cotenant’s fractional share. Cotenants have 45 days from that notice to tell the court they elect to buy, and where several step forward the court divides the right between them in proportion to what they already own. Payment is then due on a date the court sets no sooner than 60 days out.

One mechanic matters more than it first looks. The election is all-or-nothing: a cotenant who elects buys all the interests of everyone who asked for the sale, not a chosen one of them. If two of your four siblings want out, keeping the house means buying both of them out, at their appraised shares, on that timetable.

Read that again if you are the one who wants to keep the house, because it reverses the leverage. A sibling can start the process. They cannot finish it over your objection if you are able to pay what the statute says their share is worth. The Act took effect October 1, 2022 and applies only going forward — it has no effect on a partition action filed before that date.

If a buyout is the route, somebody has to know what the house is worth. An offer costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

The District, since February 2023

The District built the same machinery into Title 16 — Chapter 29, Subchapter III, D.C. Code §§ 16-2931 through 16-2941, enacted by D.C. Law 24-239 effective February 23, 2023. The cotenant buyout at § 16-2935 tracks Maryland’s, mechanic for mechanic: after the court determines value, any cotenant other than one who requested the sale may buy all the interests of those who did — the same all-or-nothing election — priced at the whole-parcel value multiplied by the selling cotenant’s fractional share, with the same pro-rata allocation when several cotenants elect.

Virginia took a different road — and the difference matters

It would be tidy to say the whole region adopted the same reform. It did not, and getting this wrong could cost a Virginia family real money. Virginia has no separate heirs-property act and no statutory definition of “heirs property.” What it has instead is a 2020 rewrite of general partition law inside Title 8.01, Chapter 3, Article 9.

Under § 8.01-81.1, the court orders an appraisal by a disinterested appraiser licensed in the Commonwealth unless the parties agree on value or the court finds the appraisal would cost more than it is worth; parties get 30 days to object and a hearing follows no sooner than 31 days after notice. Under § 8.01-83, the court cannot allot or sell an undivided interest until it finds that dividing the property physically is not practicable. Only then does it consider giving the whole property to a party willing to take it at the appraised value, then partial allotment with a sale of the rest, then a sale of everything.

The distinction is real. Virginia’s allotment is available to a party who will accept the property; Maryland’s and the District’s buyout is a specific right, on a 45-day clock, belonging to the cotenants who did not ask for a sale. A Virginia court choosing between competing claimants weighs how long each has owned or possessed the property, sentimental or ancestral attachment, current lawful use and the harm of ending it, and contributions to taxes, insurance, maintenance and improvements — with no single factor deciding it alone.

None of this is a substitute for advice about your own situation. It is here because a page that told you “Maryland, Virginia and DC all passed the same heirs-property law” would be wrong, and that error is on a lot of pages.

When Everyone Agrees and It Still Won’t Close

A second family of problems has nothing to do with anyone being difficult. Everybody signs, and the sale still dies — because the title cannot be insured. These are the ones that surprise people.

Nobody has authority to sign yet

If the estate was never opened, there is no personal representative, and an heir’s signature alone may not convey what a title insurer will accept. This is the most common reason an agreed sale stalls, and it is procedural rather than adversarial — it needs the estate opened in the right county, not a fight. Our county probate guides cover who files, where, and what it costs.

An heir is missing, unreachable, or has died too

A brother nobody has heard from in twenty years still owns his fraction. So does a cousin who died after the original owner, whose own heirs now hold his piece. Chains like this are why a house sits for a decade. They are solvable, but the solution is documentary and takes time, and no buyer can wish it away at closing.

There are liens against the property

Unpaid property taxes, a mortgage nobody kept up, a contractor’s lien, a judgment against one of the heirs, a Medicaid estate claim. The common advice is that a lien must be cleared before you can sell, and read literally that leaves families believing they are stuck until they find money they do not have.

That is not how a closing works. The funded closing pays the debt. Recorded liens are identified in the title search, paid from the proceeds at settlement, and released — the money moves in one direction on one day, and what is left over is what the owners divide. A lien reduces what the family walks away with. It does not, by itself, prevent a sale from happening.

The liens that genuinely complicate a sale are the ones nobody knew about, or the ones larger than the house is worth. Those need to be found early, which is a reason to get the title work started before you have a buyer waiting.

Free and no-obligation, and we will say so plainly if what you have needs a lawyer rather than a buyer.

Where We Fit

We are a buyer. We purchase houses directly, for our own account, in Maryland, Virginia, the District and Florida. We are not a law firm, we do not represent anyone before a court or a Register of Wills, and we have no role in a partition action.

What we can do is be the certainty at the end of the process. Families in this position usually need to know one thing before they can decide anything else: what does the house actually convert to in cash, and how fast. A real number from a real buyer turns an argument about a hypothetical into a decision about a figure. Sometimes that number ends the standoff, because the sibling who wanted to keep the house now knows exactly what buying the others out costs. That outcome is fine with us — we would rather you knew.

We buy as-is. We do not ask families to repair, clear out or stage a house that four people are arguing about. We cover normal closing costs, an offer costs nothing, and we have closed in as little as seven days when the title was ready — though most of these take two to three weeks, and the ones with an unopened estate or a missing heir take considerably longer. Nobody can promise you a closing date against a court’s calendar, and we won’t.

Start Where Your Property Is

Procedure is county-level. The court, the filing office, the fees and the timeline all change across a jurisdiction line, sometimes across a bridge. If you know where the house sits, start with that county:

• Prince George’s County, Maryland — co-owners who can’t agree
• Prince George’s County, Maryland — the estate and probate path
• All counties — probate section

If several of you own the house and you are trying to work out what each of you can and cannot do, the bands above are the map. If you want a number to put in front of the family, that is a phone call.

Tell Us What You’re Holding

How many owners, whether the estate was opened, and what everyone wants. That is enough for us to tell you whether there is a transaction here — and if there isn’t one yet, what has to happen first.

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