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Term Definition Liquidation Value - the price that an owner is compelled to accept when a property must be sold without reasonable market exposure.
Application in Divorce Normally, the fair market value or market value. Sometimes, because of circumstances beyond control, goods must be sold at liquidation value. A seller can generally accelerate market exposure by dramatically reducing the market price. Sometimes a seller may lower the asking price of a house just to be unburdened of it.

Property sold at liquidation value is sold at distressed value. "Going out of business" sales move goods at liquidation value.

Another way of thinking about liquidation value is that it is an extreme demonstration of a buyer’s market.

In a divorce, some property almost always ends up being sold a liquidation value. Almost all the household goods that people buy at malls -- "stuff," as George Carlin puts it, the things people don’t need but cannot live without -- sell for liquidation value. Even expensive items -- televisions, computers, lawn tractors -- command only a fraction of the sale price when sold secondhand under distressed conditions.

Compare Fair Market Value and Fair Value.