VDC’s Divorce Realtors
A Divorce Realtor is ideally included at the outset of your divorce as part of your neutral “financial team,” with your Financial Specialist and Divorce Mortgage Broker.
Realtors with a divorce specialty offer a number of critical services, including: obtaining the real-time value of your home based on clear criteria, staging to optimize value, and ensuring potential buyers don’t know about and can’t leverage your divorce to drive down the market value of your property.
Unlike other VDC professionals, your Divorce Realtor must be on the ground in your area, and cannot be “virtual.” VDC’s Divorce Realtors have obtained either a Certified Divorce Real Estate Expert® (CDRE®) designation, or have specific divorce-related experience and training as required by our Bylaws. VDC’s Realtors sustain the higher, legal and ethical standards needed by divorcing clients, to ensure Divorce Realtors:
- Value the family’s joint best interest over the sale in all matters,
- As a neutral, treat the house as the client, rather than either spouse,
- Refuse listings outside their scope of experience, training and expertise,
- Refuse to receive or offer referral fees,
- Maintain clients’ confidentiality with the general public, including regarding their divorce,
- Understand the conditions for the need and use of court involvement,
- In a divorce listing, refuse to represent both sellers and a buyer (known as “double ending” a sale),
- Avoid all real and perceived conflicts of interest,
- Avoid any vested interest in the purchase of divorce properties, and
- Avoid representing one spouse without the written consent of the other spouse.
Whether or not you use VDC’s Realtors, it’s important that you ensure that any realtor working with you and your spouse during a divorce understands and respects these ethical and legal restrictions.
