A Florida house held as tenants in common can be sold three ways: you sell your share alone, every cotenant agrees and sells together, or a partition action under Chapter 64 forces the issue, with a statutory buyout for heirs property along the way.
By Ty Stevenson, Founder of InTym Properties
"Tenants in common" has nothing to do with renters. It is a form of co-ownership where each owner holds an undivided fractional interest in the whole property: two siblings might each own half, four cousins a quarter each, and every share can be sold, mortgaged, or inherited separately with no right of survivorship. It is the default co-ownership Florida law gives an inherited house, and it is the structure behind a large share of the "my co-owner will not sell" problems that land in probate court.
The good news is that Florida law gives every cotenant three exits. None of them lets a co-owner trap you in the property, but they differ sharply in speed, cost, and what you net.
Most tenants-in-common situations in Broward County arrive one of three ways: siblings inherit a parent's house and take title as cotenants, unmarried partners buy together, or divorced couples keep the house through a transition that never quite ends. Once the arrangement stops working, one cotenant wants out and the other does not, and that is the whole problem.
The structure matters because of what is missing: unlike a joint tenancy, there is no right of survivorship, so a cotenant's share passes into their estate at death, which is how two co-owners quietly become four.
Every cotenant can sell their undivided interest without asking anyone. The catch is the market: a half-interest in a house you cannot live in alone is worth a fraction of half the house. Retail buyers will not touch it, financed buyers cannot get a loan on it, and the realistic buyers are the other cotenants or investors pricing a discount for the illiquidity. Selling the share alone is legal and fast; it is just the worst net of the three paths in almost every case.
When all cotenants consent, the sale is an ordinary transaction with extra signatures: one contract, every owner signs the deed, the title company disburses each cotenant's share of proceeds at closing. This path produces the full market price, works on a listing or a direct cash sale, and costs nobody a lawsuit. The only thing it requires is unanimity, which is the thing that broke.
In practice, most partitions never get filed because the credible threat of one produces the consent this path needs. A cotenant refusing to sell a house the group cannot split knows exactly what Chapter 64 does next.
Any cotenant can file a partition action under Florida Statutes Chapter 64. The complaint goes to the circuit court where the property sits, the other cotenants are served, and the court determines each owner's share and whether the property can be divided. A single-family house cannot be sawn in half, so the judgment is almost always partition by sale under § 64.071: the property is sold and the proceeds distributed by share.
Timing runs from a few months uncontested to well over a year when shares are disputed or a cotenant cannot be found, and the costs of the action, including attorney fees in many cases, come out of the proceeds. Partition is the remedy, but it is deliberately an expensive one, which is why it functions mostly as leverage.
If the property qualifies as heirs property, essentially co-owned family real estate passed down without a governing agreement, Florida's version of the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act adds two mandatory steps before any sale.
First, the court determines fair market value by an independent appraisal under § 64.206, unless the cotenants agree on a value. Second, under § 64.207, the court gives every cotenant who did not request the sale 45 days to elect to buy out the interests of those who did, at the appraised value. It is a built-in buyout right: the sibling who wants to keep the family house gets first shot at purchasing the departing shares before the property is exposed to the market. Only if nobody elects the buyout does the case move to a sale.
For families, that changes the negotiation. The cotenant who wants to sell cannot force a quick auction without giving the others their 45-day window, and the cotenant who wants to keep the house has to come up with real money at a court-set price, which is exactly the moment a written cash offer on the whole property becomes the clean alternative.
When the cotenants agree the house should go but nobody wants to fund a listing, the repairs, or six months of showings, a direct cash sale closes the co-ownership in one transaction: every owner signs once, the title company wires each share, and the tenants-in-common problem ends with the deed. On a Broward house with deferred maintenance, the kind that often sits behind these disputes anyway, the cash offer also prices the condition the listing market would punish.
For the related cases, the title problems post covers clouds and quiet-title situations, the divorce sale post covers the co-ownership that comes out of a marriage, and the inherited-house taxes post covers what the step-up in basis does to the proceeds each cotenant receives.
Co-owning a house in Broward County with someone who will not sell, or ready to exit together? Email hello@intymproperties.com or schedule a call with Sean. InTym Properties buys tenants-in-common properties with every cotenant paid separately at closing, written offer usually within 48 hours.
Yes, three ways. You can sell your undivided share by itself, all cotenants can agree to sell the whole property and split proceeds by ownership percentage, or any cotenant can file a partition action under Florida Statutes Chapter 64 and have the court order a division or a sale. No single cotenant can be forced to keep the property forever.
Legally yes, without the other owners' consent, since each cotenant owns a transferable undivided interest. Practically the market is thin: retail buyers do not want to co-own a house with a stranger, so a fractional share usually sells at a steep discount to an investor or to one of the other cotenants.
A lawsuit under Florida Statutes Chapter 64 in which a cotenant asks the court to end the co-ownership. The court can divide the property in kind, feasible for land but not for a single house, or order a sale and split the proceeds by share. Attorney fees and costs come out of the proceeds, which is why partition is the leverage that pushes negotiations.
For heirs property, Florida's adoption of the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act adds steps: the court first determines fair market value by appraisal under section 64.206, then under section 64.207 the cotenants who did not ask for a sale get 45 days to elect to buy out the interests of those who did, at the appraised value. It is a statutory right of first refusal inside the lawsuit.
An uncontested partition where cotenants cooperate can resolve in a few months. A contested one, a missing cotenant, a dispute over the shares, or a fight over sale versus division, commonly runs a year or more, with attorney fees paid from the proceeds at the end. Heirs-property cases add the appraisal and buyout steps.
Not for the two unilateral paths: you can sell your own share or file for partition without anyone's consent. The only path that requires everyone's signature is selling the entire property, because a buyer needs all the owners on the deed to get clear title.
Partition still works. The lawsuit proceeds by service of process, and a cotenant who ignores it defaults; the court can order the sale anyway. For heirs property the court still runs the appraisal and buyout steps first, so an absent sibling gets the same statutory protections before any sale is ordered.
Written offer usually within 48 hours, signed by InTym Properties, every number shown. No repairs, no fees, no obligation.
Florida gives a personal representative no fixed deadline to sell estate real estate: the power to sell is immediate once letters issue, and the practical clock is the three-month creditor window, the two-year claims cutoff, and whatever deadline the court or the heirs set.
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