Foreclosure and bankruptcy in Texas
I sold a piece of property in Texas a few years ago and did owner
financing. The buyer has not paid in the last six months and does not
communicate with me, so working out a payment plan was not an option.
I hired an attorney to foreclose. The buyer filed for bankruptcy. This
stopped the scheduled foreclosure sale.
My attorney has referred the case to a bankruptcy attorney in his firm
to attempt to get the stay lifted on the foreclosure.
I would appreciate hearing from others who have experience with a
situation like this and can estimate the time these things take to
resolve..
I feel my attorney will take the correct legal steps, but I would also
like to minimize my legal fees. For example -- should I really be
trying to get the foreclosure stay lifted ASAP ?
First of all I'm not an attorney but I'll tell you what someone I know went
through...let's call him Joe. All of this happened in Texas.
The person (Jim) stopped paying their mortgage...Joe found out when applying for
credit...this showed up under his name.
Joe called Jim to ask what was going on. Jim did not call back promptly (would
take weeks, once was on vacation, etc.). Joe offered Jim to buy back the
house, refund the sizable equity minus expenses, saving everyone trouble, while
Joe started to pay the back mortgage. Jim refused, and eventually started
paying the mortgage again. This happened several times. Eventually Jim filed
for bankruptcy stalling all foreclosures. Lawyers got involved and got things
moving again. Jim pulled a maneuver of selling half the house to a relative in
order to protect himself...it didn't work. Jim then proceeded to sell half the
house to a phony corporation in a western state. Lawyer in western state was
hired on behalf of Joe...legal wrangling continued.
This whole thing took 2 years or more. What it took to get it stopped was a
no-nonsense judge who could tell what Jim was doing--abusing the system that was
there to protect him. As I understand it, the laws are written so that nobody
can loose their home in the event of hardships...but when Jim was taking a 2
week vacation, and having had the opportunity to back out of the deal, while
recovering a sizable equity was turned down...you can see Jim wasn't too smart.
So what happened to the equity? Most of it went to pay for lawyer fees, court
fees, and the sale of the house.