Posted by She Said
Several years ago, Greg and I bought a condo to help a family member out. In order to do this, we refinanced our house to put down the required 20%. You might be thinking, several years ago… wasn’t that the worst time EVER to buy any property? You might be wondering, wasn’t that at the peak of the housing bubble?
YES.
We purchased this condo at the going rate of $125,000. At the time, it was “hurry up and buy before the prices go up even more!” Now, the same condos are going for around $38,000.
You may be asking yourself if our bank has us by the balls?
YES.
For reasons I won’t go into, Greg and I put the condo up for sale prior to leaving for China. Yes, it would be a short sale. Yes, we’d be kissing the bank’s proverbial feet to forgive the loan difference. No, it was not feasible for us to keep it because we couldn’t rent it for anywhere near what our monthly mortgage plus HOA dues were and we simply could not make up the monthly difference out of our own pockets.
Very soon after the condo went on the market, we got an offer on it! A cash offer! Hooray, you must be thinking. Yes, hooray indeed. Only the freakin’ bank sat on it. And sat on it. And sat on it until we were about to leave China, almost three months after the offer was made. The bank “counter-offered” with what I consider to be equivalent to someone throwing a flaming bag of dog shit at our door. Seriously, they would accept the offer if we forked over $2,000 in cash AND signed a promissory note for an additional $11,000. Excuse me, which ATM machine would you like me to bend over?
We politely refused the counter offer, and the bank has been sitting on it AGAIN. We haven’t heard anything from them in about two months only to hear today what I consider to be the biggest FUCK YOU news on our condo saga to date. It is possible the bank is ignoring us because based on the bank’s “mortgage insurance”, it may be financially better FOR THEM to let the condo go into foreclosure because they will receive more from the insurance than from the very acceptable CASH OFFER on the table. This seriously angers me to the core. So much so, that I figure if we are going to have one foreclosure on our credit, then it may as well be two. You may have seen that we are streamlining our life and have our house up on the market? Yeah. Why the hell not make it two.
Now some of you may be thinking that we accepted the terms of the loan and should just suck it up. Yes, we signed the loan papers. Some may even be pissed at us for attempting a short sale. I would expect that you would be the same people picketing businesses that leave establishments because of a bad business deal. Seriously, why is ok for businesses to write off bad deals but not individuals?
I’m so blissfully happy that all that freakin’ money that went into saving the banks has trickled down to us EVIL home owners.
I'm sorry; that sucks. At least the blog looks good!
ReplyDeleteI have to say I feel your pain... I paid my mortgage that whooping 1800 bucks every month while the whole time my house value was going in the toilet. When I saw there was a reform program to lower the interest rate I was so stoked and applied for it, I mean come on how could I not qualify. Guess what, I didn't because I wasn't behind on any payments I was declined. Then since I was in their system I couldn't apply for any thing for three months and was told I could be helped if I was behind in payments. I took the leap quit paying reapplied for help and they came back with an offer. Thinking I was going to be set as I opened the packeage and read the papers I was floored they didn't lower the interest rate at all they extend my loan out to 40 years and my payment drop a whole 121 dollars. It has been six months now with out paying the bank and every day it freaks me out. My credit sucks which was stellar before and now who knows if I will even have a house in 6 months. Though just yesterday they sent me a letter that said thanks for the interest in our housing reform program, hmmm did I apply for something I didn't know about!
ReplyDeleteChin up. Chris has said we may need to walk away from our house if things go south with IGT. At first, I was like but we owe the money because we took out the loan. Chris then said that's why the house is collateral. Oh, yeah. His brother applied for the housing help and was told that he wasn't in the hole deep enough as well. We tried applying for help and they wouldn't even return our calls. We qualify. This isn't going to end well and if the banks start to whine about all the defaulting loans, they've only go themselves to blame.
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