What is a Certified Divorce Real Estate Expert (CDRE®)? Let me back up and tell you my story. When I was going through my divorce, my ex-husband and I had an amicable relationship. We were educated, capable people, we had professionals helping us, but we still didn’t always know where to start.
There were decisions about our children, finances, the house and what our lives would look like afterward. Half the battle was figuring out which questions we should be asking and who was qualified to answer them.
At the time, I had been a stay-at-home mom for 10 years. I had a degree in finance, but I needed to reinvent myself professionally while also navigating divorce and becoming a single mother. I eventually found my way into real estate, partly because of my financial background and partly because I’ve always loved architecture, homes, and design.
Years later, remembering how lost we had sometimes felt during our own divorce led me to specialize in divorce real estate and become a Certified Divorce Real Estate Expert, or CDRE®. I wish I had known then what I know now, particularly when it comes to the house.
For most couples, the marital home isn’t simply another item on the list of assets. It may be one of the largest financial assets they own, but it is also the place where they raised their children, the neighborhood they chose, and often the thing that represents stability when everything else is changing. That combination makes it very easy for the emotional value of a house and its financial reality to get tangled together. This is where a CDRE® can be helpful.
A Certified Divorce Real Estate Expert (CDRE®) is a real estate professional who has specialized training in the intersection of real estate, divorce, and family law. The training goes well beyond learning how to list a home owned by two people who happen to be divorcing. It includes neutrality and bias, divorce finance, communication and conflict, property valuation, professional ethics, complex divorce real estate situations and understanding how a real estate professional fits into the larger family law process.
That last piece matters more than people might realize. Divorce is one of those situations where a lot of very good professionals can be involved at the same time, and everyone needs to know what their job is. My job is the real estate.
I don’t determine how the equity should be divided or whether an asset is marital or non-marital. I don’t interpret a divorce judgment, tell someone what they can afford after divorce or decide whether one spouse should get to keep the house. Those questions belong with attorneys, financial professionals, mortgage professionals and other members of the divorce team.
What I can do is provide reliable information about the property itself. What is it worth in today’s market? What would it realistically cost to sell? What might the net proceeds look like? Does the condition of the property affect its value or marketability? How long might a sale reasonably take? If someone is considering keeping the home, what real estate information should be part of that conversation before a decision is made?
I think people sometimes wait too long to involve a real estate professional because they haven’t decided whether they want to sell. But that is exactly when good information can be useful. If you’re negotiating a divorce based on an assumed value of $800,000 and the house would realistically sell for $700,000, that matters. If one spouse plans to keep the house but hasn’t investigated what that would require financially, that matters too. You don’t want to discover important information about one of your largest assets after you’ve already made permanent decisions based on assumptions.
If the decision is to sell, the differences between a traditional real estate transaction and a divorce sale become even more apparent. Think about an ordinary married couple selling their house.
They may disagree about whether the kitchen needs painting, but generally they’re rowing in the same direction. They have jointly decided to sell, they want the best possible price and they want the transaction to close.
Now take away that shared objective. Maybe one spouse wants the house sold immediately and the other doesn’t want to sell at all. Perhaps they disagree about the price or whether to spend money preparing the property. One person has moved out and the other is still living there. They may have very different ideas about showing access, repairs, price reductions or which offer to accept. Sometimes they’re communicating well. Sometimes they’re communicating only through their attorneys.
Even a genuinely amicable divorce can create complicated real estate decisions because two people who once made financial decisions as a household are now understandably looking at those decisions through the lens of their separate futures. This is also why neutrality is such an important part of my role as a CDRE®.
I often tell people, “I work for the house.” It sounds a little funny, but it’s probably the simplest explanation of how I approach the job. I don’t need to know who caused the divorce, and I don’t become more aligned with the spouse who called me first. Both owners need reliable real estate information, and my recommendations need to be based on the property and the market rather than the dynamics of the marriage.
Neutrality doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion. Quite the opposite. If the house is overpriced, I need to say so. If a repair could create a financing issue or something about the way we’re handling the sale is hurting the property’s value, I need to address it. My responsibility is to be very clear about the real estate while remaining neutral about the people.
There’s another audience I wish knew more about CDREs: family law attorneys. An attorney shouldn’t have to become the real estate broker in a divorce case. Yet something as seemingly straightforward as agreeing that “the marital residence will be sold” leaves quite a bit to figure out in the real world. Someone still needs to establish a realistic price, determine what preparation makes financial sense, coordinate access, interpret market feedback, manage price adjustments, and evaluate the real estate components of offers. If the parties disagree along the way, an ordinary real estate decision can quickly become a legal issue.
A CDRE® who understands the boundaries of the role can help keep those real estate issues where they belong and recognize when something needs to go back to counsel. In my opinion, that’s part of being useful to the attorney, not just the homeowners.
I don’t believe every person going through divorce needs an enormous team of professionals surrounding them. I do believe that when a question can materially affect your financial future, it’s worth getting the answer from someone who works in that area.
That’s ultimately what I wish my ex-husband and I had understood better during our divorce. We didn’t need anyone to make our decisions for us. We needed to know which questions to ask and who could give us reliable answers.
If you own a home and are considering divorce, you don’t need to know yet whether you’re going to keep it or sell it. In fact, that may be one of the things you’re trying to figure out. Start there.
Get good information about the house. Understand what you own, what it’s worth and what your realistic options are. Then bring that information back to the other professionals helping you make decisions about the rest of your life.
That’s what a CDRE® is there to do.
Like this article? Check out “Selling Your House During Divorce: The Biggest Mistakes People Make“