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Splitting House Proceeds in an Ohio Divorce: Equitable Distribution Under ORC § 3105.171 The spreadsheet has two columns. Mortgage payoff. Closing costs. Realtor commission if you list traditionally. Repairs and improvements paid for by one spouse during the marriage. Down payment funds that came from a pre-marital savings account. Mortgage payments made by one spouse…

Selling a Vacant House in Cleveland: Ordinance 3106 and What Actually Matters The annual registration notice came in the mail in February. Seventy dollars per unit, payable to the City of Cleveland under Ordinance 3106, for the vacant property on East 65th Street that you have been telling yourself you would deal with for going…

Ohio Dower Rights and How They Affect Your Divorce House Sale The title company asked the question on a Thursday afternoon. “Are you married?” You said yes — and you also said you and your spouse have been separated for 14 months, the divorce is pending, the house is in your name only, and you…

Sell Your House During Divorce or While Vacant in Ohio Two situations bring more Ohio homeowners to the same conclusion than any other. In the first, the marriage is ending. The decision has been made — sometimes mutually, sometimes after a year of trying to make it work otherwise — and the house in Lakewood,…

Sell a Rental Property With Tenants in Place in Ohio The lease has 7 months left to run. The tenants are paying on time. The unit is in reasonable condition. The relationship is fine. And you have decided — for one of the dozen reasons that brings every Ohio small landlord to the same conclusion…

Sell Your Ohio Rental Property — The Tired Landlord Exit The call came at 3:17 AM. Maybe it was the water heater again. Maybe it was the tenant in the upper unit on 41st Street who heard “a noise” downstairs. Maybe it was a furnace stuck in Lakewood in January, or a backed-up basement drain…

Problem Tenant in Your Ohio Rental? Selling Is Sometimes the Right Exit It’s the second time this year you’ve thought about filing the 3-day notice. Maybe the tenant is two months behind on rent and the partial payments keep arriving just slowly enough to suggest the next month might be on time. Maybe the lease…

Capital Gains and Depreciation Recapture on Your Ohio Rental Sale This is the question every Ohio landlord asks first. “What’s the tax bill going to look like if I sell?” The answer is rarely simple — and the math your accountant runs in April is often a worse outcome than the math a planning conversation…

Ohio Tax Foreclosure: When the County Takes the House The property tax bill arrived in February. If you have owned your Ohio home for more than a few years, you know roughly what the tax bill looks like — a number around 1.5 to 2.5 percent of the assessed value, due in two installments per…

Cuyahoga County Foreclosure: What Cleveland Homeowners Need to Know Cuyahoga County is the foreclosure capital of Ohio. It is not a comfortable distinction, and it is not how anyone in Cleveland would prefer the county to be described, but the numbers are the numbers. Cuyahoga County recorded 4,513 foreclosures in 2024 — down 21.5 percent…