It's been a week and a half since our 341. Ugh.
Upside is we got to go first although we were on the schedule for going 3rd, so not a big deal. Our atty had a migraine. He's the only one in the whole law firm that handles BKs, so he had his wife drive him and he just sat there with his head buried in a hand.
It was rapid fire. I'm not good with rapid fire. He started grilling DH about his musical instruments (he's a pro musician). Then he started grilling us about the tax return, is it done, when do we think we'll have it done, that sort of thing. (the instruments and tax refund are 100% exempt with extra room on the wildcard) Then he started asking us about the house. Here's where it got sticky.
He wanted to know if we sought and/or got a loan mod on the mortgage(s). We replied that we tried and had been denied. He wanted to know if we were going to try to keep the house and I stumbled an "um" looking at DH and our atty piped up that "No, we aren't saving the house" and DH and I agreed with that. Yes, officially we aren't saving the house, but I've been reading a lot of BK stories and the common theme especially since we're a Countrywide converted to BofA is that we would probably not have any issues in the BK, trustee or banking, and that we might get to sit in this place post BK for awhile. So then the trustee is asking about the value of the house which we had down on the docs based on the most recent Zillow of December right before we filed. And then he closed it out saying he was going to check into our house and see if it can be sold.
Basically trying to turn an easily no asset 7 into an asset 7.
W-T-F.
We had to wait until last Thurs to hear anything from our atty. Trustee didn't email him about further action on this until Wed night. The trustee wants to send an appraiser out and if it's worth it and he can convince BofA to "eat" some of the principal, go ahead and short sale our place. Oh, and we would have to have our home set up in such a case to be friendly to the real estate selling process. Yeah, we have a 4 yo and 6 yo, this guy must be dreaming if I'm going to spend all day trying to keep the house looking like a turned over hotel room for no possible gain of my own.
I was even afraid of this kind of thing after reading what trustees in CA and FL were doing, had even mentioned that to our atty as we were signing the filing documents and he just scoffed and thought that was ludricrous and had never heard of any such high-handed property grabbing ways of trustees. Don't get me wrong, we are officially not saving the house and filed Federal, but at the same time the foreclosure process is 5 months as opposed to whatever this would end up being. And we would know when that 5 months starts and be able to plan. This doesn't give us any concept of how to plan and our atty just advised us to stay put in the house given the circumstances.
Let me tell you I'm still pretty ticked off about this. From what our atty said, if the trustee really does think a short sale is ultimately worth it, this will hold our case open indefinitely until we either pay our atty a crapload of a money to file a motion (I swear he's incredibly slow when it comes to paperwork not to mention he charges $20 for one sentence emails that you'd have to be in 1st grade to take a full 6 minutes to write -- he's $200/hr) or we just let this process play out for however long it'll take. Some fresh start, eh? Depending on how this goes, you can either count me as a 341 horror story or at best just someone who is very wary about it all.
One bit of hope is that the trustee is counting the HELOC towards the total debt load that a house sale would have to zero out. As long as he stays true to that, I can't really see any honest appraiser telling him it's worth it to short sale us. We already know from our aborted HAFA short sale experience last Spring that the appraiser at that time placed our house at a value roughly equal to the 1st mortgage only. And home values have dipped down further, so presumably we might not even properly appraise at the value of the 1st mortgage and be underwater with respect to that as well.
DH and I can't imagine BofA being generous enough to eliminate the HELOC and eat some principle to be nice to the trustee so money can go to other creditors, but then again, BofA doesn't seem to act rationally when it comes to so many things home loan related.
Upside is we got to go first although we were on the schedule for going 3rd, so not a big deal. Our atty had a migraine. He's the only one in the whole law firm that handles BKs, so he had his wife drive him and he just sat there with his head buried in a hand.
It was rapid fire. I'm not good with rapid fire. He started grilling DH about his musical instruments (he's a pro musician). Then he started grilling us about the tax return, is it done, when do we think we'll have it done, that sort of thing. (the instruments and tax refund are 100% exempt with extra room on the wildcard) Then he started asking us about the house. Here's where it got sticky.
He wanted to know if we sought and/or got a loan mod on the mortgage(s). We replied that we tried and had been denied. He wanted to know if we were going to try to keep the house and I stumbled an "um" looking at DH and our atty piped up that "No, we aren't saving the house" and DH and I agreed with that. Yes, officially we aren't saving the house, but I've been reading a lot of BK stories and the common theme especially since we're a Countrywide converted to BofA is that we would probably not have any issues in the BK, trustee or banking, and that we might get to sit in this place post BK for awhile. So then the trustee is asking about the value of the house which we had down on the docs based on the most recent Zillow of December right before we filed. And then he closed it out saying he was going to check into our house and see if it can be sold.
Basically trying to turn an easily no asset 7 into an asset 7.
W-T-F.
We had to wait until last Thurs to hear anything from our atty. Trustee didn't email him about further action on this until Wed night. The trustee wants to send an appraiser out and if it's worth it and he can convince BofA to "eat" some of the principal, go ahead and short sale our place. Oh, and we would have to have our home set up in such a case to be friendly to the real estate selling process. Yeah, we have a 4 yo and 6 yo, this guy must be dreaming if I'm going to spend all day trying to keep the house looking like a turned over hotel room for no possible gain of my own.
I was even afraid of this kind of thing after reading what trustees in CA and FL were doing, had even mentioned that to our atty as we were signing the filing documents and he just scoffed and thought that was ludricrous and had never heard of any such high-handed property grabbing ways of trustees. Don't get me wrong, we are officially not saving the house and filed Federal, but at the same time the foreclosure process is 5 months as opposed to whatever this would end up being. And we would know when that 5 months starts and be able to plan. This doesn't give us any concept of how to plan and our atty just advised us to stay put in the house given the circumstances.
Let me tell you I'm still pretty ticked off about this. From what our atty said, if the trustee really does think a short sale is ultimately worth it, this will hold our case open indefinitely until we either pay our atty a crapload of a money to file a motion (I swear he's incredibly slow when it comes to paperwork not to mention he charges $20 for one sentence emails that you'd have to be in 1st grade to take a full 6 minutes to write -- he's $200/hr) or we just let this process play out for however long it'll take. Some fresh start, eh? Depending on how this goes, you can either count me as a 341 horror story or at best just someone who is very wary about it all.
One bit of hope is that the trustee is counting the HELOC towards the total debt load that a house sale would have to zero out. As long as he stays true to that, I can't really see any honest appraiser telling him it's worth it to short sale us. We already know from our aborted HAFA short sale experience last Spring that the appraiser at that time placed our house at a value roughly equal to the 1st mortgage only. And home values have dipped down further, so presumably we might not even properly appraise at the value of the 1st mortgage and be underwater with respect to that as well.
DH and I can't imagine BofA being generous enough to eliminate the HELOC and eat some principle to be nice to the trustee so money can go to other creditors, but then again, BofA doesn't seem to act rationally when it comes to so many things home loan related.
Bankruptcy Wizard
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