Country is Germany, in case that’s even relevant.

Some fifteen years ago my parents bought a property together with one of my brothers (referred to as “brother A” further down) and his wife (so each of the four owned a quarter). My father has passed away a while ago, and his share went to my mother. My mother, who wasn’t too keen on the whole idea in the first place, wants to move to a small city apartment. Apart from everything else it does not make sense for her to pay two thirds of her pension towards a mortgage for a house (half of it, anyway) that is far too large for a 75 year old woman to maintain.

Her idea is to give away the house (including the remaining mortgage) as a “living inheritance”, if that is the correct term. This would make us remaining three brothers proud owners of one eighth of a house each, which is rather useless. So brother A suggested to sit down with us and make an offer for our share in the house, so he can pay us out and own the whole thing. 

If truth is to be told, we three brothers are quite happy with almost any solution as long as we won’t inherit any of the debt. So we do not necessarily want to spend much money on an expert to evaluate the value of the property (we are aware that a living inheritance has other legal concerns that need looking after). On the other hand we think it will help to avoid tensions in the future if we are sure that brother A’s offer was fair, so we are looking at a way to arrive at a ballpark figure. 

If that makes any difference we are not so much interested in the value of the house, and more interested as to what goes into arriving at a fair offer. We broadly assume factors will include the original price of the house, current market price, the part of the mortgage that already has been paid, remaining mortgage and possibly other factors. Any advice on this would be welcome.