Can we sell our home and if so, what would be the consequences?

As long as your Chapter 7 case is closed, you can sell your property as if you had never filed bankruptcy, provided that you did disclose your home ownership in your bankruptcy & claimed an exemption for any equity in the property. The fact that you are discharged does not mean your Chapter 7 case closed. You will want to go to the courthouse, contact your attorney, or sign up for an account with www.pacer.gov to look at your file to see whether or not your Chapter 7 is closed. If not closed, you will need court permission to sell.

This is an open ended question, difficult to answer with minimal facts but I'll do my best. Having filed and received a discharge in bankruptcy does not prevent a homeowner from selling their property. What the consequences of the sale are (financial or otherwise) depends on additional facts: how much is owed on mortgage(s), whether there are any other recorded liens against the property and for how much (liens can be statutory: like for income taxes or judicial: for example credit card recorded their judgment), what is the market value of the property, and perhaps the most important question: whether you reaffirmed your mortgage(s) in your bankruptcy case. If an attorney handled your bankruptcy case, chances that any mortgages were NOT reaffirmed as I do not know any attorney who would recommend doing that to their client. You can ask your attorney or you can verify this by checking the bankruptcy documents accessible online at www.ecf.gov. A reaffirmation is not effective unless it has been signed and filed with the court. In Southern District of California, if on the bottom of schedule J a debtor has negative disposable income and the court receives a signed reaffirmation agreement the court will schedules a hearing on the matter to determine if the agreement will be approved. In that situation, only if the Judge approves the reaffirmation agreement does it become effective. If the bottom of schedule J indicates that the debtor has sufficient money to afford the mortgage payments the reaffirmation agreement could become effective without a hearing. Hope this information helps. Good Luck.

You are free to sell your home.

Make sure that the case is closed and the house abandoned. There are 2 parts of every bankruptcy. The first is discharge. The debts are listed and, if there are no objections, a discharge is ordered. This is approximately 60 days after the ? 341 hearing. There is another part of the bankruptcy that many people forget. This is administration. When a bankruptcy is created, an estate is created. The estate consists of virtually all of the property of the debtor. It is more complicated than that but this will suffice for this answer. When the trustee issues a no asset report and the case is closed, the property that was scheduled is abandoned. It is within the control of the debtor again. It may also be abandoned by order of the court during administration. Until it is abandoned, it is subject to the control of the trustee. Again, it is much more complicated than this. This is a much simplified explanation.

Yes, you may sell your home. As long as the home was listed as an asset and the trustee has abandoned his interest in the home.

Filing Chapter 7 can wipe out your obligation to pay the mortgage (unless you signed a reaffirmation agreement) but the lien is still attached to the property so the bank would still be able to foreclose on the property if you stopped making payments.

Given what you have said, you should have no problems selling your home. That assumes that there is equity in the property. If there is no equity, you will need the lender to approve a short-sale.

Contrary to what some people believe, the mortgage against your property is not discharged in the overwhelming majority of Chapter 7 cases. While this author can think of some scenarios under which a mortgage could be avoided and then discharged likely by a Chapter 7 trustee, the traditional home mortgage is not usually in that category. In other words, if you want to sell the property, you most likely will still need to pay that mortgage to convey good title to the purchaser. To do that, you will need to get a payoff quote from the holder of the mortgage who will then have to release/reconvey its lien.

There is a great deal of confusion regarding mortgages and bankruptcy. Even though you may have discharged your personal obligation to the mortgage holder, the lien remains on the property and if you try to sell it, the mortgage will have to be paid or the new buyers will not get clean title. If you have a second or third mortgage, the same holds true on those. The personal obligation is discharged but the lien remains. Good luck!

The mortgage lender still has a lien on the property, you can't legally sell the property without paying off that lien. Since you haven't been making payments for over two years, the amount of the lien with interest and late payment penalties has probably soared. You can approach the lender and find out if they are interested in a short sale, where they will release the lien for less than full value. Since they haven't foreclosed, this option gives at least some of their money back and they might be interested.

You are still considered the legal owner or owner of record on the property and until there is a foreclosure. You are still responsible for maintaining the property as for as your local municipality is concerned so many find it easier to just sell the property when the mortgage company won't foreclose.