What Happens If One Owner Doesn't Want to Sell the House?

Jointly owned properties are one of the most common forms of home ownership in the UK. Most of the time, when both owners decide to sell, the process is straightforward. But when one owner wants to sell and the other does not, the situation can feel stuck before it has even started.

It might be a relationship breakdown, a dispute between siblings who inherited a property, or a co-investment that one party wants to exit. Whatever the background, the legal position in England and Wales is clear: you cannot simply sell a jointly owned property over the objection of the other owner. But you also cannot be held in that situation forever. There are structured, legal routes available, and understanding them puts you in a far stronger position than hoping the other owner will simply come around.

This guide explains every option available in England and Wales when one owner does not want to sell, from negotiation through to court-ordered sale, what each option involves, how long it takes, and what to consider before you begin.

If you are also thinking about what the sale of your property would achieve financially, use the free Cost Saving Calculator on YooSell to understand your net proceeds after all selling costs before you make any decisions.

Understanding Joint Ownership First

Before exploring your options, you need to understand exactly how the property is owned. The type of joint ownership you have affects your legal rights and the route available to you.

Joint Tenants

If you own the property as joint tenants, you and the other owner together own the whole property. There are no separate defined shares. Neither of you owns a distinct half or a specific portion. If one owner dies, their interest automatically passes to the surviving owner under a principle called the right of survivorship.

As a joint tenant, you cannot sell your own portion of the property independently because there is no defined portion to sell. Any sale of the property requires the agreement of both joint tenants, or a court order.

Tenants in Common

If you own the property as tenants in common, each owner holds a defined share of the property. Those shares do not have to be equal. You might own 60 percent and the other owner 40 percent, or any other proportion, and those shares can be specified in a deed of trust.

As a tenant in common, you own a distinct share and in theory you can transfer your own share. However, you cannot sell the whole property without the agreement of the other owner, and attempting to transfer your individual share without their cooperation is rarely practical because no buyer would typically purchase a share of a property without a right of occupation or a path to full ownership.

How to Find Out Which You Are

If you are not sure how the property is registered, your solicitor can check the title register at HM Land Registry. The register will confirm the names of the registered owners. If the property was originally purchased as joint tenants, it may have been subsequently severed to tenants in common by a formal notice, which would also be recorded on the title.

What Cannot Happen: Clearing Up Common Misconceptions

Before looking at what you can do, it is worth being clear about what the law does not allow. Some owners in this situation assume they have more unilateral power than they actually do. Others worry they are more trapped than they actually are. Both misunderstandings can lead to poor decisions.

You Cannot Sell the Property Alone

If a property is jointly owned, all registered owners must consent to a sale. A conveyancer cannot proceed with a sale without all owners signing the transfer deed. If one owner refuses to sign, the sale cannot complete through the standard conveyancing process.

You Cannot Remove the Other Owner Without Consent or Court Order

Even if the other owner has left the property and is not living there, even if they are not contributing to the mortgage, and even if the relationship has completely broken down, you cannot remove their name from the title or sell their interest without either their formal written consent or a court order.

You Cannot Be Held There Forever

The other side of this is equally important. The law does not permit one owner to veto a sale indefinitely without consequence. Refusal delays a sale but does not prevent one permanently. A court has the power to order a sale of a jointly owned property even against the wishes of one of the owners, and it has the power to impose costs on a party who has been unreasonably obstructive.

Step One: Direct Negotiation

Before any formal legal route is considered, direct negotiation is almost always the right first step. Not because it always works, but because attempting it properly creates an important record, saves money and time if it succeeds, and demonstrates good faith if court proceedings later become necessary.

Why Negotiation Should Come First

Courts in England and Wales expect parties in property disputes to attempt resolution before resorting to formal proceedings. If you go straight to a legal application without having genuinely attempted to negotiate, the court may take a dim view of that approach when deciding how to allocate the costs of the proceedings.

Negotiation also keeps open the possibility of a much faster resolution than the court process can provide. A property dispute through the courts can take many months and cost both parties tens of thousands of pounds. A negotiated outcome, even one that requires some compromise, is almost always preferable on practical and financial grounds.

How to Approach the Conversation

Approach the conversation with a clear focus on practical outcomes rather than the grievances that may have created the dispute. What does the other owner want? What are their concerns about selling? Are those concerns about timing, about receiving what they see as a fair share, about having somewhere to move to, or something else?

If you can identify what is actually driving the refusal to sell, you are in a much better position to address it directly. A refusal that is really about uncertainty over the division of proceeds is very different from a refusal rooted in emotional attachment to the property. Each requires a different approach.

Getting Any Agreement in Writing

If you reach any form of agreement, even a preliminary one, record it in writing immediately. A verbal agreement to sell by a certain date, or to accept a particular price, or to have one party buy the other out, has little practical value if the other owner later denies it or changes their mind. A written record of what was agreed is important and, if it is a substantive agreement about the sale, should be formalised through a solicitor.

Step Two: Mediation

If direct negotiation has not worked, or if communication between the owners has broken down to the point where direct conversation is not productive, mediation is the next step worth considering before formal legal proceedings.

What Property Mediation Involves

A trained, neutral mediator facilitates structured conversations between the two parties. The mediator does not take sides and does not make decisions for you. Their role is to help both parties communicate more effectively, understand each other's positions, and explore whether there is an agreement that both could accept.

Property mediation is private. Nothing said in the process can be used in court if mediation fails. This allows both parties to have frank conversations without the risk that what they say will be used against them later.

Why It Can Succeed Where Direct Negotiation Fails

Mediation is often effective precisely because it removes the direct dynamic between two people who may have a difficult personal history. The mediator manages the pace and structure of the conversation. Many property disputes that appeared intractable between the owners themselves have been resolved through mediation in a single session.

The Cost of Mediation

Property mediation is substantially cheaper than court proceedings. A mediation session typically costs between five hundred and three thousand pounds in total, split between the parties, depending on the complexity of the case and the length of the session. Even at the higher end, this is a fraction of the legal costs involved in a contested court application.

Step Three: The Buyout Option

In many co-ownership disputes, one practical resolution that both parties can accept is for one owner to buy out the other's share. The owner who wants to stay in the property pays the owner who wants to sell their share of the current market value. The departing owner receives their money and is freed from any ongoing mortgage liability.

How a Buyout Works

The buyout price should be based on an independent valuation of the property, not on what either party believes the property is worth. Commissioning a formal RICS valuation from an independent surveyor gives both parties a credible market value figure as the basis for the calculation.

Once a price is agreed, the buying-out party typically needs to remortgage the property to raise the funds. Their lender will carry out their own valuation. The solicitor then manages the transfer of title into the sole name of the remaining owner, and the departing owner is formally released from the mortgage.

Why Release from the Mortgage Must Be Confirmed

The single most important practical point in any buyout is ensuring that the departing owner is formally released from the mortgage by the lender. An informal arrangement where one owner stays in the property and agrees to make the mortgage payments, while both names remain on the mortgage, is not a safe position for the departing owner. They remain legally liable for the mortgage debt even though they no longer own the property. If the remaining owner stops paying, the departing owner's credit rating is affected and they could face legal action.

Formal release from the mortgage must be confirmed in writing by the lender, and this should be a condition of any buyout agreement.

Using the Valuation Calculator Before Negotiating

Before entering buyout negotiations, understanding the current market value of the property gives you a strong foundation. The free Valuation Calculator on YooSell provides a data-driven estimate of your property's current market value based on local market conditions, which you can use as a starting reference point before commissioning a formal survey.

Step Four: Severing a Joint Tenancy

If you own the property as joint tenants and you want to protect your position before or during negotiations, you may wish to consider severing the joint tenancy. This converts the ownership from joint tenants to tenants in common and defines your share of the property.

Why This Can Be Important

As a joint tenant, if you were to die before the dispute is resolved, your interest in the property would automatically pass to the surviving owner under the right of survivorship. Severing the joint tenancy means that your defined share of the property passes instead according to your will or the rules of intestacy rather than automatically to the other owner.

How to Sever a Joint Tenancy

Severing a joint tenancy requires serving a formal notice on the other owner. The notice does not require the other owner's consent. It is a unilateral act. Once the notice has been served and received, the joint tenancy is severed and both parties become tenants in common, each holding a defined share.

You should instruct a solicitor to serve the notice correctly and to ensure it is properly recorded at HM Land Registry, where a Form A restriction will be entered on the title register to record that the property is now owned as tenants in common.

Step Five: Applying to Court Under TOLATA

If negotiation, mediation, and the buyout option have all been exhausted without resolution, the formal legal route is an application to the court under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996, commonly known as TOLATA.

What TOLATA Is

TOLATA is the statutory framework that governs disputes between co-owners of property in England and Wales. Under Section 14 of the Act, any person with an interest in land held on trust can apply to the court for an order. The most commonly sought order in a co-ownership dispute is an order for sale.

What the Court Can Order

Under TOLATA, the court has wide powers to resolve co-ownership disputes. These include ordering that the property be sold, appointing a receiver to manage the sale, and directing how the net proceeds are to be distributed between the owners. The court can also order that one owner pay occupational rent to the other where one owner has been occupying the property while the other has been excluded from it.

How the Court Decides

The court does not simply decide in favour of the party who wants to sell. It considers a range of factors under Section 15 of TOLATA. These include the intentions of the people who created the trust of land, the purposes for which the property is held, the welfare of any minor who occupies or might reasonably be expected to occupy the property as their home, and the interests of any secured creditors of a beneficiary.

In practice, the court will look at all the circumstances and exercise its discretion. Where there are no minor children living in the property and no other compelling reason to preserve occupation, the court generally favours a sale if one co-owner is seeking it. A refusal by the other owner without good reason will not prevent a sale order being made.

What Happens If the Other Owner Ignores a Court Order

If the court makes an order for sale and the other owner refuses to cooperate, such as by refusing to sign the transfer deed, the court can authorise another person to sign the documentation on their behalf. The court can also take enforcement action against a party who is in contempt of a court order.

The Cost and Timeline of TOLATA Proceedings

TOLATA proceedings are not cheap or quick. Legal costs for each party can run into the tens of thousands of pounds, and the process from issuing the application to a final hearing regularly takes six months to over a year, depending on the complexity of the case and court availability.

The court has the power to order that one party pays all or part of the other party's legal costs, particularly where that party has been unreasonably obstructive. Keeping a clear written record of all attempts to negotiate and resolve the dispute, and responding promptly and reasonably to all communications, protects your costs position throughout the process.

What Happens in Divorce and Relationship Breakdown Cases

Where the jointly owned property dispute arises from a divorce or the breakdown of a civil partnership, the process is different from a TOLATA application. The family courts have their own powers to deal with the matrimonial home as part of the financial settlement on divorce or dissolution, and these powers are wider than those available under TOLATA.

The Family Court Process

In divorce proceedings, the family court can make a variety of orders about the matrimonial home including ordering a sale, ordering that the home be transferred to one party, or ordering a deferred sale where the property is to be sold at a future point such as when the youngest child reaches a certain age.

The family court approaches the matrimonial home as one asset among all the matrimonial assets and considers the entire financial position of both parties. This is a fundamentally different exercise from a TOLATA application, which focuses specifically on the property.

Why Married Couples Should Use a Family Solicitor

If you are married or in a civil partnership, you should route your property dispute through a solicitor who specialises in family law rather than through a TOLATA application in the civil courts. The family courts' powers are broader and the process is designed to address the full range of financial issues that arise on separation, not just the property.

Inherited Properties: When One Beneficiary Refuses to Sell

A specific situation that arises frequently involves an inherited property where one or more beneficiaries of an estate want to sell and another does not. The legal framework is broadly similar but there are some additional considerations.

The Executor's Position

If the property has been transferred into the names of the beneficiaries following the completion of the estate, then the dispute is governed by the same TOLATA framework described above and the same routes apply.

If the property has not yet been transferred out of the estate, the executor or administrator has legal power to sell the property in order to wind up the estate, and in some circumstances can do so without the agreement of all beneficiaries. The specific position depends on the terms of the will and the stage the estate administration has reached.

Disputes About the Division of Proceeds

Inherited property disputes frequently involve not just whether to sell but how the proceeds should be divided. This may be because one beneficiary has been living in the property rent-free for a period, because one beneficiary has contributed to the upkeep or improvement of the property, or because the will is ambiguous about the respective shares. These issues can be resolved as part of TOLATA proceedings or through separate negotiations, and specialist legal advice is essential.

Protecting Your Financial Position During a Dispute

While a co-ownership dispute is ongoing, both owners remain responsible for the mortgage and for the costs of maintaining the property. The owner who wants to sell should take steps to protect their financial position.

Keep Contributing to the Mortgage

Even if you believe the other owner should be contributing to the mortgage and they are not, continuing to make your share of the mortgage payments protects your credit rating and avoids the risk of repossession. You may be able to recover payments made on behalf of the other owner as part of any eventual legal proceedings or settlement.

Document All Payments

Keep a clear record of all mortgage payments made, all costs incurred in maintaining the property, and any rental income received if the property is let. This documentation is relevant to how the net proceeds of any eventual sale are divided.

Understand Your Share of the Proceeds

Use the free Stamp Duty Calculator on YooSell if you are also looking to purchase your next property after the dispute is resolved, so you can understand the full financial picture of your move before negotiations conclude.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Understanding what not to do is as important as knowing what options are available.

Do Not Stop Paying the Mortgage Unilaterally

Refusing to pay your share of the mortgage because the other owner is being unreasonable is understandable but damaging. It affects your credit rating, increases the risk of default, and does not pressure the other owner in any meaningful way. It also weakens your position if court proceedings become necessary.

Do Not Change the Locks or Exclude the Other Owner

Even if you are the only person living in the property and the other owner left long ago, you cannot legally exclude them from the property. They remain a co-owner with a right of access. Changing the locks without a court order is unlawful and would significantly damage your position if the dispute escalates.

Do Not Accept Verbal Agreements

Any agreement reached with the other owner about the sale, the buyout price, the division of proceeds, or any other aspect of the property must be put in writing and formalised through a solicitor. Verbal agreements in property disputes are regularly disputed and nearly impossible to enforce.

Do Not Delay Seeking Legal Advice

The longer a co-ownership dispute runs without resolution, the more complicated and expensive it typically becomes. Relationships that are strained at the start of the dispute become more difficult with every month of unresolved argument. Seeking legal advice early, even if only to understand your options, puts you in a better position than waiting until things have deteriorated further.

Selling Your Home with YooSell Once Agreement Is Reached

Once all owners agree to sell, whether through negotiation, mediation, a buyout reversal, or a court order, the sale process itself is the same as for any other residential property. YooSell is a self-service home-selling platform for sellers in Leicestershire and the Midlands that allows you to manage your sale directly, without paying traditional estate agent commission.

Why Sellers Choose YooSell

YooSell lets you list, manage, and complete your sale with full control. You set your asking price, manage viewings through a built-in booking diary, communicate with verified buyers through the platform, and access trusted conveyancers from your seller dashboard once an offer is accepted. There is no commission taken at completion, only a fixed monthly fee.

See how the full process works on the How It Works page or explore plan options on the Pricing page.

Verified Buyers for a More Certain Sale

Every buyer on YooSell completes identity and financial verification before they can make an offer. When a property sale has been delayed by a co-ownership dispute and you finally have agreement to proceed, the last thing you need is a buyer who withdraws because their finances were not in order. YooSell's verification process reduces this risk significantly.

List on Rightmove Through YooSell

You can list your property directly on Rightmove through YooSell by choosing the Enhanced or Premium plan, giving your home maximum exposure on the UK's largest property portal. Visit the YooSell Rightmove page for full details on how it works.

Free Tools to Support Your Sale

The free Mortgage Calculator on YooSell helps you understand the financial picture for your onward purchase once the sale proceeds are released. The YooSell property guides cover every stage of the sale process in detail, from listing to completion.