A former neighbor had subdivided his property into 2 titles for the intention of selling half of it. Of course they would leave the one where their house is situated. They need the money for medical purposes. After the half of the property was sold, the neighbor intimated to us that it would have been easier if they had just sold the entire property and bought another when it was sold. It was far too difficult to subdivide and they had paid a lot in expenses and bribery.
Each country has their own ways. Somewhere it's easy to subdivide and sell a portion, in others it's not. Also keep in mind that if they would have sold the whole thing they would have had to move out, probably into a different neighbourhood etc. People are not always willing to do that.. especially if they have some more serious medical conditions.
That mention of medical condition reminded me of a friend who sold their property due to his medical condition... his children are always badgering him to sell their house for the money and he gets too stressed. And I believe that subdividing a property is not a good alternative in disposing of a property. Maybe the best to do is to just sell the entire property and divide the money or use the money to buy another property.
I can't help but feel that it would have been much easier for your friend to simply downsize to a smaller property instead. Subdividing is never easy and whilst it can work well in larger properties with multiple floors, the amount of bureaucracy involved is usually quite frustrating.
I really want to do this. I am thinking for my next home, when I have this one paid off and renters in it to bring in extra income and to use against a mortgage I will buy two lots in a new build area. Then I can sell that extra lot in 10 or 20 years OR I can build a house on it and sell that too! But at this point its just one of many ideas I have floating around for the next 20 years.
That's also our plan - to build a house or apartment to be rented out that will tide us over for our old age. But selling a house is not that easy because we had experienced selling the ancestral home of my husband. It took more than 2 years before we finally was able to meet a serious buyer. Most of the prospects were offering very low so we were quite discouraged.
Here in the UK are doing this more and more, usually it's to make ends meet and we're renting out a spare room as been popular for a while now, people are actually selling portions of their property to a long term tenant for a set amount of money upfront.
