Former owner can’t re-purchase home

Q: I lost my house to the bank through a judicial foreclosure. The bank sold the house and a company that flips houses bought it. Do I have the right in the state of Florida to repurchase it? A: Unfortunately, you’ve already lost whatever chance you had to regain ownership of the house through a legal process called the “statutory right of redemption.” In many states where there are judicial foreclosures (lender files a lawsuit), redemption laws allow the old foreclosed owner to buy back the property within a post-foreclosure period that’s as short as 10 days in New Jersey and as long as two years in Tennessee, with a one-year redemption period the most prevalent.

In redemption cases, the cost of re-buying usually includes the foreclosure sale price plus sundry charges and fees.

You don’t have that opportunity in Florida, which has no official redemption extension.

After the foreclosure auction there, you would have had only until the certificate of sale was filed by the court clerk — usually no more than a day — to buy it back.

There is a two-year-old program offered by mortgage finance giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that allows FHA borrowers who have been foreclosed upon to repurchase their homes, though at market value.

But it is geared more at people whose foreclosed homes were “underwater” due to a value loss sustained by economic conditions. It isn’t used much these days because of the generally robust housingvalue recovery.

Even with an opportunity to re-buy, such homes rarely get reacquired because the previous foreclosed owners still have damaged credit to contend with and lenders typically won’t take a chance on them.