Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Texas
my husband and i bought a home in Orange, Texas and it was owner finaced, then the original owner past away and we had a new man show up to the house and stated that he bought the contract from the hier of the estate and we have been making payments to him until last month due to a tree falling on our house in june and notified him then and we pay home owners insurance through our payment, he refused to file a claim due to a $500.00 deductable and we called the insurance company and they stated that he is the only one on the policy and has our house listed as vacant and we have lived in the house over two years, we told him last month that if he didn't get the house fixed that he wouldn't get his payment last month but we still paid him a partial payment, now he is having papers drawn up on us for forclosure due to breach of contract and we only signed and aamendment papers with him to the original papers and we don't know what we can do and what the law is on this matter, can you advise us what to do?
1 Answer from Attorneys
It is very very dangerous for you to proceed without a Lawyer. I'm worried what would have been in the "amendment" that was signed since that is really not necessary. People who buy house notes from Estates are usually doing so with a deep discount. Were you always paying the mortgage holder for the insurance or did he change that in the Amendment? You need to be very very careful in how you proceed and I suspect you need to take strong positions or will end up losing out on your home and investments/imrpovements, etc. Please get an attorney and if you have to, look at a legal clinic or the Houston Volunteer Lawyers project. I suspect you will likely end up in Court.
Do you want to keep the home? It is yours unless you choose not to defend it. You really should have had an Attorney draft the loan agreement for around $350 which would have included the language about what is to be done if there is a loss or damage/insurance. Also, a $500 deductible is very low for a typical Texas Homeowner type A or type B policy. It is usually at least 10% of the home value. So unless the home is worth about $50,000 that does not sound right. If he put a different policy in place or insured vacant investment properties under one umbrella policy, he breached his legal duties to you! Please get a Lawyer, ....an agressive one!
I am an agressive Attorney with extensive real estate and litigation experience. I'm in Houston buy I can meet you around Winnie,TX at AL-Tees if you want to engage my firm. While I usually wont get involved just to do a letter, for around $500 I can at least get a letter to him asserting your claims and review the documents. Its not like I'm going to make any money on this (its 45 miles each way), but it gets me angry to see the likely predatory practices. If he ignores the letter which wll have to threaten to file legal action against him to be effective and he files to foreclose, you will likely have to go to Court to stop it at a much higher expense or walk away at a total loss giving up your rights! Is the home worth fighting for?
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