A subordination agreement is a

legal document Legal instrument is a law, legal term of art that is used for any formally executed written document that can be formally attributed to its author, records and formally expresses a legally enforceable act, process, or contractual duty, obligation ...

used to make the claim of one party junior to (or inferior to) a claim in favor of another. It is generally used to grant first lien status to a

lienholder A lien ( or ) is a form of security interest granted over an item of property to secure the payment of a debt or performance of some other obligation. The owner of the property, who grants the lien, is referred to as the ''lienee'' and the pers ...

who would otherwise be secondary to another party, with the approval of the party that would otherwise have first lien. Typically a subordination arises when there are two existing mortgages, a first mortgage and a second mortgage, and the mortgagor intends to refinance the first mortgage. If the holder of the second mortgage does not subordinate the lien of its mortgage to the new mortgage, the new lender will not refinance the first mortgage. However, the second mortgage holder does not want to release its mortgage and re-file, due to additional costs and priority problems, so it will subordinate its lien to the lien of the replacement mortgage.

External links

Sample subordination agreement
Legal documents {{law-stub