Can a foreclosure on one home with a mortgage affect a second home that has no mortgage on it?
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Can a foreclosure on one home with a mortgage affect a second home that has no mortgage on it?
We have been living in our home in Delaware since 2009, we had to purchase a home in the city of
Wilmington when my husband became a Wilmington Police Officer. After 5 years of service, my husband had a surgery that went bad and ended his career. We received a settlement in 2017 and used the
majority of those funds to purchase our retirement home in Milford, Delaware. We want to move there
permanently and sell the Wilmington house once our youngest graduates high school this June. However, life has still thrown us some curves and affording our monthly mortgage payments are difficult and we are falling behind. If we were to let it go into foreclosure, can our other home be taken from us or any sort of action against that home? We have not discussed our options with our mortgage lender because it has sold our
mortgage to another company and am waiting for that to finalize to discuss a short sale, which I’m not 100% educated on.
Asked on December 4, 2018 under Real Estate Law, Delaware
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 5 years ago | Contributor
Your other home cannot be directly foreclosed upon or taken from you unless you specifically used the other home as collateral for the loan which you are defaulting one (which presumably was not the case).
However, IF home A is foreclosed upon and when it is sold in foreclosure, does not bring in enough to pay off the remaining balance of the mortgage, AND the lender chooses to sue you for the remaining balance (called seeking a "deficiency judgment"), then IF you lose the lawsuit (which you likely would, if money is still owed) and do not pay it, THEN the lender could seek to put a lien on other real estate (home B) that you own; and that lien could potentially be used to force the sale of that second property to satisfy the lien.
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