548
Opinion of the Court
means than foreclosure sales." Post, at 560. But in the vast majority of those cases, they can refer to the traditional common-law notion of fair market value as the benchmark. As we have demonstrated, this generally useful concept simply has no application in the foreclosure-sale context, supra, at 536-540.
Although the dissent's conception of what constitutes a property's "value" is unclear, it does seem to take account of the fact that the property is subject to forced sale. The dissent refers, for example, to a reasonable price "under the circumstances," post, at 559, and to the "worth of the item when sold," post, at 552 (emphasis added). But just as we are never told how the broader question of a property's "worth" is to be answered, neither are we informed how the lesser included inquiry into the impact of forced sale is to be conducted. Once again, we are called upon to have faith that bankruptcy courts will be able to determine whether a property's foreclosure-sale price falls unreasonably short of its "optimal value," post, at 559, whatever that may be. This, the dissent tells us, is the statute's plain meaning.
We take issue with the dissent's characterization of our interpretation as carving out an "exception" for foreclosure sales, post, at 549, or as giving "two different and inconsistent meanings," post, at 557, to "reasonably equivalent value." As we have emphasized, the inquiry under § 548(a)(2)(A)— whether the debtor has received value that is substantially comparable to the worth of the transferred property—is the same for all transfers. But as we have also explained, the fact that a piece of property is legally subject to forced sale, like any other fact bearing upon the property's use or alienability, necessarily affects its worth. Unlike most other legal restrictions, however, foreclosure has the effect of completely redefining the market in which the property is offered for sale; normal free-market rules of exchange are replaced by the far more restrictive rules governing forced sales. Given this altered reality, and the concomitant inutil-
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