Appellate Practice Attorney serving New York, NY
You don't say how you and your brother own the property - as tenants in common, as joint tenants, as 50% shareholders of a corporateion which owns the property? Assuming the most likely scenario, that you own it as tenants in common, you can sue to partition the property, which means divide it between you, but if physical partitiion is not feasible or commercially viable, as it seems here (most homes can't readily be divided, as opposed to unimproved property), then the Court would likely order the property sold and the proceeds divided. Even if you didn't want that ultimate result, starting a partition action would start a clock and get things moving, so that your brother would have to come to the table and negotiate a fair settlement where one of you could buy out the other. You may be able to work something out along the following lines: you sell the property to your brother and he mortgages it to come up with the money to pay you, or you could give him a mortgage so that the debt would be secured by the property.
Answered on Mar 11th, 2019 at 2:49 PM