Land / Home Exemption

[wrinkleigh]

Here to be a pest again. This occured to me last night, and I need to float the idea here before asking my attorney.

You may recall from my previous posts, we have a 1999 Manufactured home sitting on 2 acres of land. Attorney cant "promise" we wont lose it because it is valued at $78,000, and we owe only 57,000, so we are over the exemption by about $1000.00 ($20,000 in GA).

Here is my question. We own the 2 acres of land outright it is NOT included in the financing for the home. The two are in no way related. We financed the home completely by itself.

Can I simply exempt the land outright, it is worth by itself about $5,000.00

The value on the home if it stands by itself wayyyyyy less than what we owe, because it is a 9 year old doublewide, so we would have no equity in the home by itself. Only when you take the land/home combo that it becomes valuable.

What do you think. Would land by itself qualify for an exemption?

Thanks for the help.

[HHM]

Some states will have separate exemption for mobile homes and homestead real estate. However, the homestead exemption applies to where you live; thus, there must be some sort of improvement, a dwelling, on the property for the exemption to apply (in most cases). Under normal circumstances, you typically cannot apply the homestead exemption to unimproved real estate (because you cannot live on unimproved real estate).

Treating them separate may not be in your best interests because conceivably, the trustee could take the Land, but not take the mobile home, since there is no way to exempt the land separate from the homestead.

[SinkingFast]

In GA, you have a $600 WildCard you can use on anything. If you don't already have plans for that, you could apply that $600 to your home.