buying assets back from trustee

[shotgundexte]

i am filing a chapter 7, i have a car that we show and sometimes race. I have alot of time invested in this car. Will the trustee come to house and look at the car and boat? The car could be missing its interior, and it does have an oil leak-- will this matter? The boat has a cracked block fixed with JB weld, and could have a carburator that is destroyed on it-- will this matter? How will the amount actually be determined that i will have to spend to buy assetts back from the TT. Any help would greatly ease my stress level, thanks much. This forum alone has helped alot.

[justbroke]

Either way you will need to provide a value for those assets on your Schedules (Schedule B). That value will probably be questioned to the extent how you determined the value. For example, the blue book for boats or the NADA guidebook are good sources for determining value.

If you cannot exempt these assets the Trustee will probably have them appraised to determine the value. This appraisal may happen anyhow. In some Districts, the Trustee will send them to auction, even if you wanted to buy them from the Trustee. They figure they don't need to deal with any "negotiation" and you can buy it back for what the market will bear. Also, some Trustees will always use the "average" clean retail value, regardless of condition.

You and your attorney will need to determine what's fighting over. Or, the Trustee won't even care and will abandon any interest in the property!

Have you actually tried to value the items? I mean, the boat is structurally sound except the engine? A hull has some value.

[starr4law]

I agree with justbroke - alot of it is trustee discretion when it comes to valuing property. For a place to start, you could ask a pawn shop come out and do a written appraisal.

Depending on your state that you live in and/or how much equity is in your home, this could be a moot point since you could either have tons of wildcard left and protect the stuff with no problem or you could have no wildcard left and run into trouble that way.

Usually the Trustees are awfully busy and are interested in an offer to buy back assets rather than sending them to auction. However, if you have an attorney, please let him/her take care of that for you.

Good luck!

[JackBondLove]

Well, my trustee used every bit of leverage to maximize the amount I had to pay to buy my stuff back. I barely got him to agree to lower the amount of the house by the standard 6% realtor fee.

You just have to stop crying and face the fact that when you file Chapter 7, you are getting a fresh start, including losing all your non-exempt stuff.

I would say to value the items at the lowest possible value that you could realistically get away with. If your car needs work, then come up with a spreadsheet detailing all the work, and the value of the car once everything would be fixed.

One interesting idea is to dag the boat and the car to a high priced shop that would do the work and get an estimate. Just say that you are hoping for a big sale in your business and that you have been wanting to get this work done for a while.

[roozterdvx]

My TT required us to have our vehicles appraised including our boat.
Our attny gave us a few guys in our area that are familiar with BK annd the guy we used did take into account any problems and defects which he deducted when figuring values. I also provided repair estimates to the appraiser which he factored in as well.

The TT questioned the values we had put in the schedule and in the end, the truck value came down by quite a bit and the boat went up slightly.

You need to go over all these things with your attny...when you go into the 341 meeting neither of you needs any surprises.
Our 341 went pretty smoothly but a few before us had us shaking in our seats while we were waiting.

BTW,
what's your location?

[shotgundexte]

all of you that took the time to answer, thank you very much.