Changes to the Arizona Homestead Protection Act
Changes to the Arizona Homestead Protection Act
Have you ever heard of Arizona's Homestead protection act? If you haven't I’m gonna give you a brief explanation of what it was and what it is changing into I’m not a lawyer and so if you think this might affect you this video is just intended to kind of give you an introduction and I would highly encourage you to get legal advice about this topic or something like that.
So, basically, Homestead protection in the past said that a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of equity in your primary residence is kind of untouchable by judgments and liens and not like mortgage the door tax liens but yeah you know mainly judgments and civil suits and bill collectors and different things like that you know if you were to sell your home and you had a judgment against you they could place a lien on your house but you were guaranteed that at least 150 000 of that was still going to you, the good news is that they the state legislature recently raised that ceiling the homestead protection amount to 250 thousand dollars which is good considering how much home values have risen average sales prices have risen by a hundred thousand dollars just in the past year.
So there's a really good chance that many homeowners have significantly more than 150 000 worth of equity in their home the bad news is that a change in the law now allows judgments to take precedence over that homestead protection. So, if a creditor is able to get a judgment against you and it is recorded against your house even though it's your primary residence that 150 or 250 now is no longer guaranteed and protected under homestead exemption and that is going to take effect as of January 1st of 2022 so it is a huge change. Oh, and one more thing on that is that it can be retroactive so the judgment does not necessarily have to have been placed before January 1st, 2022 a creditor or you know someone else could get a judgment against you from something that happened you know previously I’m sure there's some statute of limitations and that kind of thing let's say something happened in 2020 they go out and get a judgment and place it on your house you might run into some big problems selling that house and most likely that judgment is going to have to be paid so very very big change again if you think this might affect you I think probably the most common scenario where this is going to affect people is a medical debt you know.
Again, I'm not a bill collector and I’m not a lawyer I don't know how often the medical collectors are going to be seeking judgments but I am willing to bet that it will become more frequent now that this law has passed because they can pretty much tie your hands put a judgment on your house and say hey you can you can't sell your house now you've got 300 000 worth of equity in your house someday when you sell we're getting our money one way or another so keep that in mind and please let me know if you have any additional questions I hope you found this information helpful.
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