Simulation: a fictional property for practice.

A Texas sheriff’s sale: what did the debtor own?

A Texas sheriff is selling a rental house to pay a court judgment. The opening bid is low. Find out what the sale actually passes.

A fictional rental house at a sheriff’s execution sale in fictional Mesquite Flats County, Texas, a county of about 300,000 people.

• Sale: Sheriff’s sale under a writ of execution on a money judgment, first Tuesday, Texas
• Property: A rental house; the debtor doesn’t live there
• Older first mortgage: $120,000, recorded years before the judgment
• Value as-is: About $230,000; a tenant lives there

Mission 1: Before you bid

Pick everything that’s true.

• A homestead is protected from forced sale for most debts, so I’d have an attorney confirm this isn’t the debtor’s homestead
• The sale passes only what the debtor owned, so the $120,000 mortgage stays
• In this county, I need a no-back-taxes statement or bidder registration to get the deed
• The debtor can buy it back for 180 days

Read the judgment and the writ, get a title report, and look at the property only from the street.

Mission 2: You win at $70,000

What happens next?

• I pay as the sheriff’s civil office directs and get a deed to the debtor’s interest. If I don’t pay, I can owe 20% of the value plus costs
• I get the deed now and can pay within a few months

A sheriff’s execution sale isn’t a trustee’s or tax foreclosure sale, so the 30-day notice rule in Property Code 24.005(b) doesn’t apply to it. Whether the tenant’s lease survives depends on whether it was in place before the judgment lien attached.* Have an attorney review the lease before you give any notice, and remember that only an eviction case in court can remove anyone.

Would you bid $70,000?

Buy, investigate or pass? Work through the drill to see what an experienced investor would weigh.