Should I stay or move out

[imran93]

I surrendered the house in Cap 7. The bank started the foreclosure process almost a year ago but never heard anything from the bank. I am still maintaining the house and moved my stuff to my parents. I most of the time sleep there and cut grass etc. A person came and said that he is from bank and just wants to check if house is still occupied and maintained. I checked my insurance company and they say if I vacate the insurance will not be effective. So I am staying for safety of property and liability issues

My question is that does still occupying house past discharge is illegal? Would bank can demand mortgage payments past discharge? I am ready to move out at moments notice but bank has not come yet. Should I just wait for the bank to come or move out and abandon the property

[StartinOver]

Occupying the house past discharge is not illegal. The bank can't demand any money from you for anything at this point, and if they are dragging their feet on the foreclosure, it's possible that they are simply buried in foreclosures, or there is something wrong with the paperwork and they can't get their act together. There's no reason for you to leave right away. New York state's Attorney General has this information on the timeline for the foreclosure process in that state: http://www.ag.ny.gov/features/forecl..._timeline.html

It looks like you have about 445 days from the first missed payment. This timeline might be a bit complicated to figure out by your bankruptcy and the Automatic Stay, etc. if the foreclosure began before your discharge. But you should be able to recalculate it from the next notification you receive -- identify what the document is and figure out where you are in the timeline from that.

Bottom line - free rent for as long as it lasts.

Good luck!

(Disclaimer - we are vacating before the process gets fully underway, because we have a dog and a bird and needed to find an affordable stand alone house so we wouldn't later be evicted because neighbors could hear the barking and squawking while we are at work. Found a place with a landlord we have known for years and he met our price. So we are not exactly taking our own advice here. I hope to parlay this into a cash for keys deal - which you might want to investigate too. In order to successfully negotiate that, it needs to appear as if you are fully occupying the property and have not moved out yet - cash for keys is an incentive to get out quickly and leave the property in broom clean condition. If you've already left they don't need to incentivize you and they know it.