Posted by John Merchant on March 17, 2006 at 20:36:41:
I once had an elderly woman bring in a property deal kinda like this.
Her “loving” sister back in Iowa was generously offering to buy my client’s share in their deceased parents old house…for $500, which sounded like $5M to my poor client.
Looking at the paperwork it seemed to me that my client was likely being taken advantage of, big time, by the sister back in Iowa, who lived next door, knew the local values, etc.
I called a local RE Broker in that town to get a rough idea of what the house might be worth.
His opinion was $35,000, meaning my client’s half interest was worth about $17,500 and I told my client to hold up a little bit while I communicated with the sister.
We soon settled that for upward of $15,000 to my client.
So her piddling fee to me made her a good bit of money.
So I’d suggest you do a little homework before you decide to sell your interest, and maybe get some help figuring out what your whole property is worth.
Some experienced local Agent could probably, for just a few bucks, find an approximate market value for you so you don’t give away the farm.
Once you know the value of the whole, you can quickly see what your proportionate share is worth.