We Buy Undivided Interest in Property
What is Undivided Interest?
Sometimes called Fractional Interest. Sometimes called Co-Ownership. If you own undivided interest in land, it means you own the land with other people.
The most often occurrence where a person comes to own undivided interest is when is when that property is inherited. For example, if a mother of three children owned 100% “Fee Title” to a property when she died, then that property would be inherited by her three children, unless there was a Will or something else saying otherwise.
While inheritance is the most common reason a person comes to own an undivided interest in property, there are many other ways it could happen.
How much property do I own?
If you own an undivided interest in a tract of land, it means you don’t own 100% “Fee Title” of the whole tract of land. Instead, you own that land with other co-owners. You do own each acre of land, each tree, and each blade of grass. You are just not the only person that owns each acre, or each tree, or each blade of grass. You share ownership of all of those things with the other co-owners.
For example, if you inherited a one-third interest in a 30 acre tract of land, then you inherited the whole 30 acre tract, every tree, and every blade of grass. However, you only own a one-third interest in each tree or blade of grass. Other co-owners own the other two thirds of those acres, trees and those blades of grass.
People often refer to their undivided interest as a certain amount of acreage out of the whole tract. In the example above, the person who inherited one-third of a 30 acre tract may say he owns a “10 acre interest” in the 30 acre tract. This can cause confusion, because many people then tend to believe that the owner can simply pick out 10 acres and declare that as “his 10 acres”. Unfortunately, that is not how undivided interest works. Since each acre is shared with the other co-owners, all of the co-owners have to agree to let you have any particular “10 acres”.
Similarly, in order to sell “fee title” to a buyer, all of the co-owners must agree to sell any portion or all of the tract.
Is there a limit to how much the ownership can be split?
There is no legal limit to how much ownership can be divided.
It is not uncommon for someone to find that they own less than a 1/100th in a tract of land.
Can I sell my undivided interest?
Yes, you can sell your undivided interest, if you have an interested buyer (Like Us!).
Nearly all buyers are interested in buying “Fee Title” which means the buyer is getting the maximum interest in the land, entitling the owner to use the property in any manner consistent with the law. So nearly all buyers are only interested in buying 100% of the interest in the property. If you have anything less than 100% interest in the property, then you alone can not sell to a buyer “Fee Title”.
Most people who own an undivided interest in land have a very hard time selling it unless they can get all of the other undivided interest owners to agree to the sale. Sometimes that is impossible, though, if you can’t find some of the other undivided interest owners. Other times not every owner of the land is agreeable to selling the property, leaving the owners who do want to sell feeling stuck.
Even when a buyer is interested in undivided interest in land, that buyer will rarely pay fair market value for your undivided interest. This is because the buyer is ultimately buying into the problem that is ownership in indivision.
There are legal remedies, such as court ordered partitions, for people who own an undivided interest and do not want to own it anymore. But they can often be very costly, take years to see through to the end, and almost always require retaining a lawyer familiar with that area of law.
In the end, many people who have inherited an undivided interest in property and would like to sell it, just giving up and write that property off.