Keeping the house sounds simple until you run the numbers. The mortgage doesn’t care about your marital status. You’ll need to know whether you can carry the payment on your own income, and whether a lender will even let one of you take over the loan. Sometimes that means refinancing, and sometimes it means the loan stays in both names, which is a risk worth understanding before you agree to it. This is where a CPA helps, because the tax side of keeping a house after divorce can get complicated, and so does the question of what the other spouse gets in exchange. A lawyer should look at how the house fits into the overall settlement, not just the house by itself.
Buying out your spouse is the middle path. One of you stays, the other gets their share of the equity, and you both move on. The hard part is agreeing on what that share actually is. You can get an appraisal, but you also have to subtract the mortgage and account for costs, and people often disagree about which numbers count. If the buyout means one of you refinances to pay the other, the lender’s requirements matter as much as the agreement between the two of you. Get the terms in writing and have a lawyer review them. A CPA can help you think through how the payment is structured and what it means at tax time.
Selling is the cleanest break, but clean doesn’t always mean easy. You’ll both need to agree on timing, on how the proceeds get split, and on who handles what during the listing. If one of you is living there and the other isn’t, that can create friction. If you can’t agree, the court may end up deciding for you, and that’s usually slower and more expensive than working it out yourselves. Before you list, talk to a HUD-approved housing counselor if you’re worried about affording your next place, and talk to your lawyer about how the sale fits into the divorce agreement.
Comparing the three really comes down to a few practical questions. Can either of you afford the house alone, including taxes, insurance, and upkeep? How much equity is actually there once the loan and selling costs are subtracted? How soon do you each need to be somewhere else? And how much conflict are you willing to live with during the process? Write the answers down and compare them side by side.
Call the county about property tax and recording questions, since those rules are specific to Sacramento County and change over time. Don’t rely on what a friend heard. And don’t make a move on the house before your lawyer and CPA have seen the whole picture.
There is a fuller write-up at the house in a Sacramento divorce.