"... You've got to stand for something, or you'll fall for anything ..."

Ownership is never complete until ALL the factors of ownership have been established:

1. Value
2. Boundary
3. Control (authority and responsibility)

Until all of the conditions of the sale have been met to the satisfaction of both buyer and seller, the transfer of ownership has not been completed.

The same situation pertains in respect to dis-owning a property as pertains to acquiring a property.

It is not sufficient for a person to simply cease to value something, and thus cease his ownership and hence his authority and responsibility.

For example, a man owns a light aircraft which he is flying over an urban area.

The motor stops.  Try as he will, he can't get it started again.  The plane is going to crash.

At this moment, the man's evaluation of the aircraft undergoes a rapid and total revision.

When he took off, the airplane might have been the item of property he owned that he valued most.  Now that it is about to crash, it is the single item of property that he values least.

So, he flips on the radio (which still works) and announces to anyone listening that he is now dis-owning the airplane, and so is lo longer the authority over it, and is not responsible for what it may do.

Does this divest him of ownership?

In a word, no.  It does not.

He may have suddenly lost his sense of value for the airplane, and he has certainly lost (and renounced) effective control of it.

The boundary of the airplane however is still his responsibility, unless and until he can locate someone else who will come forward to accept that responsibility.

Under the circumstances, this solution is of course highly unlikely.  But until he has successfully managed a transfer of the property contained within the boundary of his ownership and properly relinquished his control, his ownership continues just as the ownership of the apartment house continued in the hands of the seller until ALL terms had been met.