Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Texas

Re: Multiple owner land sales

You can either agree or litigate. An agreement would involve either splitting the property up or selling the property based on an agreed split of the proceeds. If you cannot agree, any of the owners can bring an action for partition, which will involve the Court deciding how to split the land into appropriate shares. Any owner can demand this remedy; there is no vote or such. Litigatng, of course, will be much more expensive than agreeing. In addition to legal fees, real estate expets will have to be retained. As far as getting out without paying any legal costs, you could try and do it yourselves, but my prediction is you would end up in court after all and spend a great deal more than if you went to a lawyer in the first place. You're talking about a $400,000 -- $700,000 piece of land and to sell it you'll need to spend $5,000 -$10,000 in legal, surveying and title costs (all of whihc likely can be collected at closing out of the sales proceeds). Good luck.

Re: Multiple owner land sales

You have a few different options. If you can get everyone to agree probably the path of least resistance (and the least expensive) would be to have the siblings execute a family settlement agreement where you agree to split the property up into equal parcels, so that each sibling owns 100% of a distinct parcel. This will allow whomever to sell his/her share for whatever price s/he chooses. You all can agree to split the attorney and survey costs if you so choose.