I inherited a home from my grandmother that was valued at about $85,000 at the time I inherited it, then the economy turned. At the time that I sold the house (I really struggled to find a buyer and had to settle for someone with not a lot of cash), neither I, nor the buyer had the money to go to an escrow company because my grandmother had an outstanding mortgage owed of about $14,000. So they paid a small down payment $750 and then started making monthly payments. I was doubling up on the mortgage payments to the bank to get it paid off faster and I was saving the rest of the payment money to be able to go to Escrow by year 5. Then I found out my dad was in a bad financial state and I needed money fast to help him and had to sell the contract that I had with the buyers to a company to get money right away. Of course, then they did all of the legal sales paperwork at that point and took over the contract. I received only a small fraction of what I had originally sold the house for minus all of the closing fees and transfer paperwork, plus paying the mortgage still owed to the bank on the property. When I file my taxes and claim this sale, can I just claim the final amount that I received?. or do I have to claim the original sales amount? I have claimed all of the interest that I have made over the 1st 1 1/2 years that I held the contract as interest income. This was a second home, as I said I inherited it from my grandmother. The original sales price was $75,000... the contract was for 10 years, and our agreement was to go to Escrow at year 5 after I had the bank mortgage paid off. I paid all of the taxes, they had to provide proof of homeowners insurance. When I sold the contract, the mortgage buyer leagally closed the sale and transferred ownership of the contract from me to them. I ended up only received after all of the fees were paid $14,000. I didn't want to do it, but I had no choice because the economy had just changed for the worse and I had to have the money or my dad would have been living on the streets. Now I am worried that I may be living on the streets if I have to pay taxes on a $75,000 sale that I never received. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

No, if you are still paying the , the sale of the house was not done properly, you have to pay that off to transfer the deed of the house to someone else.

If the loan is in your name and the deed in their name, you could just not pay, and they would go after the house, and have a real legal mess.

They merely bought the contract, so they now are in the contract with you to buy the house, ( I assume, not seeing the paper work) and they in turn owns the contract with the other people.

If they did not pay off that loan on the house they are taking serous advantage and I am not sure it is even a legal sale at this point

Next I am also not sure you actually sold them the house to file any taxes on anything, did a new deed get filed at the court house ?

No, when the third party mortgage buyer bought the contract from me, they paid the existing mortgage off that I had been making payments on as well as paid all of the back taxes owed, etc. The title search was done and titled cleared before closed.