@SeeingRed - no problems for ranting. All this stuff can be incredibly frustrating.
In my experience (as long as there is enough funds to do so) you'd both be expected to have similar houses, that had enough bedrooms for the kids and were close enough for schools.
The fact that the children don't want to stay over is slightly irrelevant (courts generally want children to have a meaningful relationship with both parents, and child maintenance aside child arrangements are separate to finances).
There's also a few things at play. Mortgage raising capacity (for both of you), savings, pensions and so on.
I guess the nuts and bolts question is that if you keep the house - can you afford to buy him out and can he then be housed appropriately.
Property particulars are one part of the puzzle, but judges tend to take the view that unless there's enough liquid assets sloshing around for him to get appropriate accommodation then both parties will have to cut their cloth.
Would advise suggesting property particulars for both parties. And trying to make sure that those properties are not miles apart. (If one party says they need a 5 bedroom house in Dulwich Village or Hampstead, but their ex only needs a two bedroom flat in Streatham or Finsbury Park, then this is typically viewed as nonsense).
You want to look at the whole puzzle of the finances and then think about what's important to you. I'd do this ok two bases:
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if you keep the house, how can he reasonably house himself. What can you raise to buy him out. How much mortgage can he (affordably) get, what can you give up to offset (savings, pensions, investments). See if you can find a way to make it work (there might not be one, there often isn't)
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if the house has to be sold. What is a reasonable level of property for you to both buy. Say you need three bedrooms each, within half an hour of school (or whatever). What is the cost level on that, and can the assets be split so that mortgages required leave people on an even income footing.
With the youngest at 15, there is a possibility of staying out for 3 years, selling and splitting the assets then. However, even though Uni-age children often live at home, your housing needs are usually deemed to be less.
It's really hard to reason through without concrete numbers - but an example of how it might work out is something like...
Family home worth £1.5mn (£150k mortgage left). 4 bedrooms.
Two children.
Both parties need a three bedroom house. While not as nice, you can achieve that near enough to schools with £900k.
Husband earns £100k, Wife earns £50k.
Husband's mortgage capability is probably somewhere around £300k (Will be lower than expected because of child maintenance with no overnights).
Wife's mortgage capability is £180k.
There's £100k in savings
Husband gets £600k equity + mortgage = £900k house
Wife gets £750k equity + mortgage = £930k house.
Savings split fairly evenly.
In that case wife keeping the house might be tricky. Because there's not enough cash assets to give him an equivalent property.
That said, if husband has a comparatively big pension, they might choose to offset that, give savings to him, and wife remortgage to release some ready cash, and you could make the numbers just about squidge.
Obviously a nonsense example based on fake figures. But that's the kind of big picture type of dividing and thinking you want to have in mind.
Does that make sense?
Property particularly are a tiny piece of this. And people usually high ball their needs. A bit of that is fine, because you want wiggle room to negotiate. But within the context above, you want to be suggesting something that is reasonable.