Selling a home can be long and arduous if you don’t have a good real estate agent that you can work with. Preparing the house for sale, working with offers, and finally doing all the paperwork takes time and patience. It is even more difficult to sell a home with a mortgage, tax liens, or other unpaid debt. To help make things easier for you, we thought it would be useful to put together a brief article on this subject. If this is something that you’re interested in learning more about, read on as we break down everything you need to know about selling your home with a mortgage or other unpaid debt.

Why Selling a Home with Unpaid Debt Is Difficult?

If you’re hoping to buy a home, then you’ll have to be prepared for the entire process, including the costs of selling your house. Indeed, selling your home with a mortgage can be rather tricky. Not only will you have to put together money for a down payment, but you might also have to spend money on repairs and renovations. To add to this, moving costs, new furniture and fixtures, and more can make the process of selling a home more difficult. 

Things get even more difficult if you’re underwater and you owe more money on your home than it’s currently valued at. If you can’t afford a real estate agent to assist you with selling your home or a new place to live, you will have to work with your lender to modify your loan, set up a repayment plan, refinance, short sell, or go into foreclosure.

What Kind of Debt Affects Selling Your Home?

It is actually quite normal for you to owe an unpaid debt when selling your home. While the typical mortgage payment lasts for thirty years, if you haven’t paid off your entire mortgage yet, you will have to pay the debt when your home sells.

Unfortunately, you may not be able to sell your home for as much as you owe on it. This is called being “underwater” or having negative equity. For example, if the housing market tanks and you fall behind in your mortgage payments, you will be underwater or have negative equity. If this happens, you might want to try and sell your house on the market before asking your lender for a short sale.

Here are types of debt that will influence the process:

• Mortgage
• Any secured debts (home equity lines of credit)
• Tax liens
• Other liens
• Judgments (if an unsecured creditor has filed a lawsuit)
• Outstanding utilities or special assessments
• Agent commission and closing costs

How Do You Get Rid of Unpaid Debt?

Before selling your home with a mortgage, you should sit down and calculate all of your debts. If you are able to pay off any debts, you should focus on the ones that can cause you to lose your home, such as loans and mortgages. If you cannot afford to pay off your debts, you may want to consider selling the home to pay them off.

If you are hoping to pay off all your debts and sell your home, you need to make sure that you will have enough money for the transaction. You’re going to want to sit down with a professional to make sure that you are not missing any debts. To do this, figure out what the value of your home is, then compare that amount with how much debt you owe. After doing this, you can determine how much money you will have left, if any.

Conclusion

We hope this article proves to be useful when it comes to helping you understand how to sell your home with a mortgage or other unpaid debt. While it may seem tricky, it’s not something that you won’t be able to manage as long as you know what you’re doing. Be sure to keep everything you’ve learned here in mind so that you can make the most informed decisions possible.

Greenlight Offer connects cash home buyers in Texas to homeowners needing to let go of their homes for some cash. Our goal is to make transactions seamless and easy for both parties, as they should be. Old house buyers are also welcome as there are people who offer their year’s old homes to new owners. Check out how to sell a home fast by inquiring through our website today.