Anyone ever foreclose on purpose?

[LiLStar]

We're in a bad money situation.. and yes, a lot of bad choices got us here. We're trying to change our ways and dig ourselves out. We really can't afford our house. We've never been late on a payment, but thats because we prioritized it over other bills! Lately, the only way we've been making it has been to simply not pay on some of the credit cards (and doing a lot of ignoring our phones..sigh..) I've looked into possibly doing some in home child care, but best case scenario that brings us to *barely* scraping by paycheck to paycheck, and not having anything extra for emergencies/savings/or simply anything thats "not a regular monthly bill".

So we're about 99% sure we want to move to be close to my family (about 3 hours away) dh telecommutes anyway so he could keep his current job. But moving there also gives the option of a new job, since there's actually higher paying jobs there! The problem is.. getting out of the house. Its probably worth at least 10k less than we owe on it.. plus realtor fees/closing costs. Thats a huge difference to owe! One thing thats been suggested is simply quit paying on it, and basically be "squatters" until we're evicted, and save the money for a few months of rent. That just doesn't seem very honest, and I'm not entirely comfortable with it. Then there's just sending the keys back to the bank and giving the house back and immediately leaving.. which seems a bit more ethical.

Its just such a hard decision when we really can't foresee the consequences. Its accepted that our credit will be trashed. Has anyone ever been in this situation? Any advice?

[enigo]

We've thought about doing the same thing, but just haven't pulled the trigger. We're in South Florida, and I don't know what it's like there, but it takes nearly a year for the bank to forclose here. Think of the money we could save in a year!

They actually have a program here where they pay you $1000 to stay in the house for 6 months with no mortgage payments. Apparently the banks started this because so many people were trashing the properties before leaving. The catch is the house has to still be in good condition when you leave.

[RollerCoasterMama]

We've been working with the bank to short-sale since last fall. They've had the same offer on the table (keeping us from doing anything else) since the first week in January. The bank dodges calls, reassigns the file every couple of weeks and just WILL NOT say yay or nay. It's a good offer. Our townhouse has fallen $60K in value in just 4 years. We're divorcing so neither of us can keep it.

At this point, we're seriously considering just riding it out. STBX has been living there even though I moved out. We've been playing nicely by the rules. We showed the house the same way we would have if it were a for-profit sale and it's in very good shape.

Originally the bank told our realtor that with VA loans they had a policy of making a decision within 30 days. They deny that ever happened.

The dumbest thing is...we happened to have filed a BK 3 yrs ago (long story but the patterns that got us there are also what let to my decision to get divorced). So we've got no personal liability in the house. We already took the credit hit so it doesn't matter whether we short-sell, deed-in-lieu or wait for foreclosure. Selling for profit wasn't an option. We didn't have an extra $60K in the bank to write over to the bank on the loan. We spoke with the bank and did things this way. It's SOOOOOOOOO frustrating!!!

But I do know that I feel better about the whole situation knowing that we have been trying our darnedest to do the short-sale first. And we actively try to reach the bank to move things along. Our realtor even asked us to call and see if we could get someone, anyone!, who would talk about the file.

So if STBX can live there for a few more months, so be it. I don't think we'd stretch it out to the last moment, but who knows when that would even be???

The system is SO broken right now. But for your own peace of mind, I'd probably try to short-sell first before giving up completely.

[jtbuko]

Nope, but I know how hard it is to be underwater on a mortgage (we owe at least $100k more than our home is worth) and stuck and far away from family.

We faced a similar choice three years ago and after much introspection, angst and discussion came to the conclusion that the foreclosure option is meant for worst case scenarios - divorce, death, cancer, job loss, etc. - and that we could pay our mortgage so we should even though it was (and still is) hard.

I did the childcare thing. At first all it did for us financially was help us live paycheck to paycheck, but WITHOUT increasing our credit card debt. Now each year we manage to pay off another bit of debt and my husband's career matures a bit so each year is easier. Plus the home daycare makes many more household expenses tax deductible and can reduce taxes/ increase tax refund.

However, if our place was only $10k less than we owed (as you say yours is) we'd probably attempt to short sell or even sell at a loss (even if we had to take a separate loan for $20k to pay off $10k loss and $10k fees). It would be worth it to be FREE instead of trapped!

[Fuamami]

I haven't read all the other responses, but I just talked to our realtor today and we are going to do a short sale. If we don't get any offers or the bank won't accept the offers we get, we're going to foreclose.

I would highly advise that you pay your credit cards and stay current on all other bills first. We used our credit cards to pay our mortgage because we were trying to get a modification. We got a trial modification, and then they never moved it to permanent. And the trial payment was still more than we could afford.

I do think a short sale would make sense if you are only 10K underwater. Especially if you used the reason that you needed to move. The impact of a short sale is probably going to be a lot less on your credit, especially if you get current on everything else. We are about $180K underwater, even though we put down almost 20% on our house and had a conventional mortgage. At this point, it makes no sense to keep struggling to pay it. It will be decades, literally, before we have any equity again. It's appalling. We owe $330K, the realtor suggested listing it at $189K, assuming that offers will come in at up to $20K less.

Call your lender and tell them you are struggling, and then call a realtor.

[MyLilPwny]

We are short selling. The house is in escrow right now for $175,000 less than we bought it for a few years ago. This is the second time its in escrow. The first buyer backed out at the last minute, 2 months ago, but we already moved in to our new home at that time, so now the old home is sitting vacant. Its been over a year since we stopped making payments on the old home. The bank's letter stated that they would have foreclosed on us in the beginning of this year, if we weren't short selling, but since we are, they are waiting patiently for a buyer to come through. Our realtor who is coordinating everything for the short sale is doing a great job so far, and we don't have to pay him anything. We've been working with him since December 2009, so this process is taking quite a while. We originally planned to do foreclosure until we learned that we could short sale for free. The realtor will get paid from the bank when escrow closes. Life is so much better now that we moved into our new home that is almost 3 times cheaper than what we were paying on the old home, and this is a very nice, modern, bright home with good views too.

[Ianthe]

We short sale last year.. it's a better option than foreclosure. There is also something you can do called "deed in lieu of foreclosure" or something like that- you basically tell the bank that you can't make the payments anymore, please take the deed to the house and you walk away without paying for the difference. I've never known anyone to actually do it though. If you really want out, find a good short sell Realtor and foreclose only as a last resort.

[Ianthe]

Originally Posted by jtbuko

However, if our place was only $10k less than we owed (as you say yours is) we'd probably attempt to short sell or even sell at a loss (even if we had to take a separate loan for $20k to pay off $10k loss and $10k fees). It would be worth it to be FREE instead of trapped!

If you short sale, you don't pay the difference.. the bank writes it off, so you wouldn't have to take out a loan for that money to pay back. If you just sell it at a loss without SS then you would have to pay the difference.

[saintmom]

We walked. Turned in the key and filed bankruptcy.Moved home with family.It's been wrenching.On the upside my hs'd kids are in school and have been successful and happy.I have a job as an aide and am finishing school online. Hopefully I'll have a teaching job by next year.After a year and a half of unemployment dh will bring home his first paycheck next week.His job has health ins and a 401k.
If we could do anything differently we should have sold the 5yrs ago when he first got laid off. we didn't want to. Who knew the business he started ( construction) would have been hit so hard by the recession?
I think trying to hang on was more agonizing and resource draining than getting out while we could have. ya gotta love hindsight

[happysmileylady]

Your credit will also affect your ability to rent someplace. A short sale will look better on your credit than a forclosure. But with either, you could find that if you try to immediately go rent something somewhere else, they will see that most recent, huge ding on your credit and possibly deny you the ability to rent.

[saintmom]

I talked with a loan officer at our new bank yesterday. Her opinion was that the way the economy had effected people; they were more concerned with whether you had jobs and income now and what your credit history was before the recession hit.If you had a good credit history before things got bad and you've found work now, you're a pretty good candidate for a loan.

[annethcz]

I know a few people who have voluntarily chosen to have their homes forclosed on. They either stopped paying the mortgage or did a deed in lieu of forclosure. These things happened 1-2 years ago. Every person I know who has done this is happy with the decision they made. They all feel they're in a better finacial position than before they forclosed. None of them have had trouble renting a home- although I think all of them have rented houses from individual landlords (as opposed to renting an apartment from a large company). Obviously, it's not all smooth sailing. But, as an observer, I've been surprised at how easily the people I know have moved on, and how content my friends profess to be at the decisions they made.

[CrazyCatLady]

Originally Posted by LizzyQ

We short sale last year.. it's a better option than foreclosure. There is also something you can do called "deed in lieu of foreclosure" or something like that- you basically tell the bank that you can't make the payments anymore, please take the deed to the house and you walk away without paying for the difference. I've never known anyone to actually do it though. If you really want out, find a good short sell Realtor and foreclose only as a last resort.

My ex and I did this. We pretty much just gave the house back to the bank and called it even. It didn't even hurt our credit. So all that was lost was our down payment (which was significant to us, but things could have been so much worse really).

[Angelorum]

No personal experience, but the NPR show Planet money did a show on strategic defaults a month or two ago. I think you can listen to it here

[LiLStar]

Oh, I think I was thinking of "deed in lieu" before, just didn't know the term for it. We're not sure whether to go for that or short sale. Interesting that deed in lieu didn't hurt credit! short selling seems like a hassle. Melaya, was it a hassle in anyway, or pretty straight forward/easy? I guess the banks would probably prefer it because the people who walk away by choice aren't going to be selling off the appliances and trashing the house before they leave, like some foreclosures.

[RollerCoasterMama]

Originally Posted by LiLStar

Oh, I think I was thinking of "deed in lieu" before, just didn't know the term for it. We're not sure whether to go for that or short sale. Interesting that deed in lieu didn't hurt credit! short selling seems like a hassle. Melaya, was it a hassle in anyway, or pretty straight forward/easy? I guess the banks would probably prefer it because the people who walk away by choice aren't going to be selling off the appliances and trashing the house before they leave, like some foreclosures.

Deed in Lieu will usually ding your credit. There must have been some special circumstances. But my understanding is that it's not much worse than a short-sale and still better than a foreclosure. Since our mortgage was included in the BK a few years ago, we took the hit back then. I'll still feel better if we short-sale, it's the best option in a stinky situation. STBX wants to live there for a while still since they're being so slow, but I think if the foreclosure process ever started up again, then we'd go ahead and do a deed in lieu instead of waiting for the whole foreclosure process.

It was a hard decision to stop paying the mortgage last summer. It wasn't a choice at that point. We got a deferral for 3 months and intended to start up paying again and continue until we sold the house. But at the end of the 3 months, the bank didn't want to bother with the paperwork to wrap our 3 deferred payments into the end of the mortgage once they found out we were working with their short-sale department. It was all or nothing. (If I had 4 months payments in the bank we wouldn't have needed a deferral!) So with their full knowledge, we have continued not paying and trying to sell the house. We got offers right away. Good offers. But one they took too long so we lost, and the 2nd seems to be sticking around, but it's been since January, so who knows any more. PITA. Consciously going into default on month 4 was really hard. But we felt backed into the corner. Those were the rules we were given to play by.

[CrazyCatLady]

We had a weird mortgage through a small realtor group. It was almost more of a loan than a mortgage I guess. So us owning a house didn't seem to help our credit, and giving it back didn't hurt it.

I wasn't even in the state when we did it. I was mailed some papers by my ex husband. I notarized, and mailed them back. Pretty darn simple really. But it seems like my circumstances might have been different/unique.

[~Boudicca~]

Originally Posted by happysmileylady

Your credit will also affect your ability to rent someplace. A short sale will look better on your credit than a forclosure. But with either, you could find that if you try to immediately go rent something somewhere else, they will see that most recent, huge ding on your credit and possibly deny you the ability to rent.

This is not necessarily true. Many landlords are taking into consideration the fact that many of the people that are looking to rent are former home owners/down on their luck because of the recession. I just recently had to go rental shopping this winter (long story--house was in foreclosure--couldn't get it to sell and it was valued at less than half of what I owed on it-- and I was filing for Chapter 7), and honestly out of the 10 rental applications I turned in only about 2 of the landlords actually bothered with the credit check. I was up front about the situation and most of them really just wanted proof of employment and recent paystubs to confirm that we could actually afford to rent from them. I am really happy with the rental I landed and so far my landlord has been great.

I have even seen a few craigslist ads that specifically say that they will not being doing a credit check due to the economy. I think that most landlords have caught on to the fact that things suck for an awful lot of people right now and if they want anyone to rent from them at all they may have to make some exceptions.

[MyLilPwny]

Originally Posted by annethcz

None of them have had trouble renting a home- although I think all of them have rented houses from individual landlords (as opposed to renting an apartment from a large company).

We didn't have trouble renting either, and we are actually renting an apartment from a nationwide company right now and we are still the owners of the house that we're trying to short sell since no one has bought it yet. We just had to give the apartment complex a larger deposit than a person with normal credit would have. That was the only difference. We actually would have preferred to rent a house from an individual landlord though, but we wanted a new, modern home (after bad experiences in the old home that we had owned) and the rent was too much for a new home. So we chose to rent a new modern apartment over renting a cheaper old house.

[p.s]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37471499?source=patrick.net