546
Opinion of the Court
price of its conclusive force under § 548(a)(2)(A), and the transfer may be avoided if the price received was not reasonably equivalent to the property's actual value at the time of the sale (which we think would be the price that would have been received if the foreclosure sale had proceeded according to law).
III
A few words may be added in general response to the dissent. We have no quarrel with the dissent's assertion that where the "meaning of the Bankruptcy Code's text is itself clear," post, at 566, its operation is unimpeded by contrary state law or prior practice. Nor do we contend that Congress must override historical state practice "expressly or not at all." Post, at 565. The Bankruptcy Code can of course override by implication when the implication is unambiguous. But where the intent to override is doubtful, our federal system demands deference to long-established traditions of state regulation.
The dissent's insistence that here no doubt exists—that our reading of the statute is "in derogation of the straightforward language used by Congress," post, at 549 (emphasis added)—does not withstand scrutiny. The problem is not that we disagree with the dissent's proffered "plain meaning" of § 548(a)(2)(A) ("[T]he bankruptcy court must compare the price received by the insolvent debtor and the worth of the item when sold and set aside the transfer if the former was substantially ('[un]reasonabl[y]') 'less than' the latter," post, at 552)—which indeed echoes our own framing of the question presented ("whether the amount of debt . . . satisfied at the foreclosure sale . . . is 'reasonably equivalent' to the worth of the real estate conveyed," supra, at 536). There is no doubt that this provision directs an inquiry into the relationship of the value received by the debtor to the worth of the property transferred. The problem, however, as any "ordinary speaker of English would have no difficulty grasping," post, at 552, is that this highly generalized re-
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