Chapter 13 Really Helps Delay Your Home Sale
Chapter 13 gives you much more power over your mortgage and other home-related debts so that you can sell your home when it’s best for you.
Our last blog post was about using Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” to buy time to sell your home. The advantages of Chapter 7 are that it’s usually quite quick and costs less that Chapter 13. It also importantly focuses on your present income and on the present value of your home. If you expect either your income or your property’s value to increase substantially, Chapter 7 could be your better option.
Chapter 7 Disadvantages—Buys Limited Amount of Time
However, Chapter 7’s quickness can often turn into a disadvantage. If you’re behind on your mortgage, or another home-related debt, the protection Chapter 7 provides against them doesn’t last long. The “automatic stay” protection lasts—at most—only 3-4 months, because that’s how quickly most cases finish. If within that time you don’t work out payment arrangements with them, they can start or resume collections and/or foreclosure.
So Chapter 7 often doesn’t give you much additional time to sell your home.
Chapter 7 Disadvantages—Buys Limited Leverage with Ongoing Creditors
Also, if your mortgage holder or other home-related creditor refuses to negotiate, you have almost no leverage under Chapter 7. Not only does automatic stay protection expire within just a few months, the creditor can often speed up that timetable. Chapter 7 doesn’t give you any other strong tools directly against your mortgage holder or home lienholder. Mostly what it does is discharge (write off) other debts so that you can focus on your home creditor(s). If that doesn’t buy enough time to sell your home, than Chapter 7 is probably not your best solution.
Chapter 13 Advantages—Buys Much More Time and Leverage
A Chapter 13 “adjustment of debts” case buys you time and flexibility if you want to keep your home and are behind on your mortgage and/or other home-related debts. Basically it does so by protecting you and your property while you catch up in 3 to 5 years.
These are all also true if you want to sell your home but need more time to do so. Chapter 13 can often prevent you from being rushed into selling when the market is not the best for selling. For example, instead of being forced to sell during the holiday season you could sell during the prime spring season. Or hold off on selling when doing so now would cause personal or family hardships. ln many situations you could delay selling your home for many months, or even years.
The Power of Chapter 13
The way this works is that you and your bankruptcy lawyer put together a monthly payment plan covering the next 3-to-5-years. This plan goes through a 2-3-month bankruptcy court approval process. The plan would show how you’d make progress towards catching up on your mortgage and other especially important debts. Usually you’d pay general unsecured debts only as much as you can afford to pay them after paying other more important debts. Often these unsecured debts don’t receive much, sometimes nothing.
Your payment plan would likely refer to your intent to sell your home, if that was to happen during the 3-to-5-year period. You’d have to pay your monthly mortgage in the meantime. And usually you’d have that same length of time to catch up on a first or second mortgage. Same thing if you were behind on property taxes or anything else that was a lien on your home’s title. This can often enable you to delay selling your home for years.
What if you couldn’t afford to catch up within even the 3-to-5-year length of a Chapter 13 payment plan? Under some circumstances you wouldn’t have to pay that much. If there is enough equity in the home, you could pay less towards catching up on the mortgage (property taxes, etc.) and just pay the remaining amount out of the proceeds of the intended home sale.
Conclusion
Chapter 13 could enable you to delay selling your home until the time is right for you. If your home has a healthy equity cushion, you could catch up on some or all of the missed mortgage payments (or property tax arrearage or some other home-secured debt) until you sell the home. In the meantime as long as you fulfill the terms of the court-approved payment plan, you wouldn’t have to worry about a pending foreclosure or other collection pressures. Instead you could focus on making the regular monthly mortgage payments and Chapter 13 plan payments. And then sell your home at a time that serves you best.