Hello everyone......I am new to this forum. I did a search and I am so glad that I did. This board is awesome and full of so much information. We are currently in the process of filing for bankruptcy and we have been screwed over before so my husband and I are so worried about being screwed over again so getting on here and reading questions and stories from people going thru the same thing has been very helpful!
Here is our story:
We built our house new in 2001 and have lived there 6 yrs as of this past Mar. 2007. We started to get into some financial difficulties at the start of 2006. My husbands job cut back on their overtime and we started using credit cards more and more often. We ended up getting to a point that we had maxed out the credit cards. Our credit wasn't the best but we paid everything on time. Then my husband got a small personal loan and I got a line of credit and paid the cards off but didn't cancel them. We got in over our head and with that and his lack of overtime we decided to refi our house to pay off debt. HELLO......wrong move as we have now found out the hard way.
We did our refinance in Sept. 2006 with a guy that was recommended by a close friend. We went to him and he said there would be no problems blah blah blah......said he would pay all of our debt off and so on and so on. Our payment was going to go up and stuff but without the debt it was going to be less than what we were paying at that point. So we did it. Long story short......he screwed us over big time. We were so stupid not to get a second opinion or talk to anyone about what we were doing. We were so ashamed we got into the mess that we didn't want anyone to know what we were doing huge mistake! He didn't end up paying off all of our debts and come to find out which we didn't know until we recently tried to sell our house was that he put us in a ARM with the rate to change in Nov. 2009and also we now had a prepayment penalty. I cried so hard over all of this when I found out a few months ago when we went to put the house on the market. I was so sick to my stomach. Felt like such a fool and like I had been taken advantage of so bad.
Fast forward to Dec. 2006 and my husband and his dad had been talking because we were really wanting to purchase some land off of him and build a house and get back out to the country so we decided we would do it and put the house on the market in the spring. We really realized then that we had kicked ourselves in the butt when it had only been a few months since we refinanced but we thought we would try and list it and see what happened.
Long story short.....we put the house on the market but it had been over appraised in the refi and the market here in Indiana has really went downhill. It is definatly a buyers market here right now. Our houses are not worth what they were even last year so we had to list it on our own FSBO. We had 2 people interested but didn't want it for that price so we were just desperate.......didn't know what to do. Started talking to my best friend about it and she suggested bankruptcy. We had so much debt and were struggling to make it. My bankruptcy attorney pointed me to an investor who had been in his office a few months before that and told me to call him and talk to him about our house. I did and right now we are working with him on a short sale. We signed all the papers he had us stop making our mortgage payments and not pay the property taxes that just came up due at the end of June and that was hard not to pay that stuff but we had to. He said that a lot of times banks won't go for a short sale unless you are hurting financially and since we are hurting and short every month and filing for bankruptcy he said we shouldn't have a problem.
So right now we have given all of our paperwork to our attorney and paid his retainer fee. We are waiting for him to draw up a rough draft of everything and we believe we are going to be filing Chapter 13 because we are over the median income for the state.
The investor has filed all of the short sale paperwork with our mortgage company and we just got a letter from the mortgage company stating that if we didn't pay the past due and any late fees in 30 days that they would start the foreclosing proceedings. The investor says that is all part of it and that it takes them anywhere from 3-6 months to make a decision to accept a short sale. I am not sure about that. Has anyone had any experience with a short sale?
While I know that this is the best thing for us and it is the only way for us to get out of our current house and mortgage and get rid of the debt that we have I can not help but feel totally ashamed and worthless. I have such a hard time even thinking that we are doing this. I mean we got into this and I swore all of my life I would never refi and I did.....swore I would never get in over my head and I did.....also swore I would never file and we are. I have the most awesome hubby who is so supportive and even when I say this is all my fault, reassures me that it is not just my fault we both got into this mess. If it wasn't for him I would be so much more stressed than I am.
We are lucky though.....we are moving into my inlaws house. That is not something I really want to do at the age of 32 with 2 children but it is what has to be done right now. We get the whole upstairs of their house and we will probably live there for about 6 months and then go rent a house until we can get our credit repaired and score built back up so we can then build our new house out in the country. I will NEVER get in this kind of credit mess again though NEVER! I will never own another credit card and if I don't have the money for it......I won't be buying it!
Sorry that was so long!
Here is our story:
We built our house new in 2001 and have lived there 6 yrs as of this past Mar. 2007. We started to get into some financial difficulties at the start of 2006. My husbands job cut back on their overtime and we started using credit cards more and more often. We ended up getting to a point that we had maxed out the credit cards. Our credit wasn't the best but we paid everything on time. Then my husband got a small personal loan and I got a line of credit and paid the cards off but didn't cancel them. We got in over our head and with that and his lack of overtime we decided to refi our house to pay off debt. HELLO......wrong move as we have now found out the hard way.
We did our refinance in Sept. 2006 with a guy that was recommended by a close friend. We went to him and he said there would be no problems blah blah blah......said he would pay all of our debt off and so on and so on. Our payment was going to go up and stuff but without the debt it was going to be less than what we were paying at that point. So we did it. Long story short......he screwed us over big time. We were so stupid not to get a second opinion or talk to anyone about what we were doing. We were so ashamed we got into the mess that we didn't want anyone to know what we were doing huge mistake! He didn't end up paying off all of our debts and come to find out which we didn't know until we recently tried to sell our house was that he put us in a ARM with the rate to change in Nov. 2009and also we now had a prepayment penalty. I cried so hard over all of this when I found out a few months ago when we went to put the house on the market. I was so sick to my stomach. Felt like such a fool and like I had been taken advantage of so bad.
Fast forward to Dec. 2006 and my husband and his dad had been talking because we were really wanting to purchase some land off of him and build a house and get back out to the country so we decided we would do it and put the house on the market in the spring. We really realized then that we had kicked ourselves in the butt when it had only been a few months since we refinanced but we thought we would try and list it and see what happened.
Long story short.....we put the house on the market but it had been over appraised in the refi and the market here in Indiana has really went downhill. It is definatly a buyers market here right now. Our houses are not worth what they were even last year so we had to list it on our own FSBO. We had 2 people interested but didn't want it for that price so we were just desperate.......didn't know what to do. Started talking to my best friend about it and she suggested bankruptcy. We had so much debt and were struggling to make it. My bankruptcy attorney pointed me to an investor who had been in his office a few months before that and told me to call him and talk to him about our house. I did and right now we are working with him on a short sale. We signed all the papers he had us stop making our mortgage payments and not pay the property taxes that just came up due at the end of June and that was hard not to pay that stuff but we had to. He said that a lot of times banks won't go for a short sale unless you are hurting financially and since we are hurting and short every month and filing for bankruptcy he said we shouldn't have a problem.
So right now we have given all of our paperwork to our attorney and paid his retainer fee. We are waiting for him to draw up a rough draft of everything and we believe we are going to be filing Chapter 13 because we are over the median income for the state.
The investor has filed all of the short sale paperwork with our mortgage company and we just got a letter from the mortgage company stating that if we didn't pay the past due and any late fees in 30 days that they would start the foreclosing proceedings. The investor says that is all part of it and that it takes them anywhere from 3-6 months to make a decision to accept a short sale. I am not sure about that. Has anyone had any experience with a short sale?
While I know that this is the best thing for us and it is the only way for us to get out of our current house and mortgage and get rid of the debt that we have I can not help but feel totally ashamed and worthless. I have such a hard time even thinking that we are doing this. I mean we got into this and I swore all of my life I would never refi and I did.....swore I would never get in over my head and I did.....also swore I would never file and we are. I have the most awesome hubby who is so supportive and even when I say this is all my fault, reassures me that it is not just my fault we both got into this mess. If it wasn't for him I would be so much more stressed than I am.
We are lucky though.....we are moving into my inlaws house. That is not something I really want to do at the age of 32 with 2 children but it is what has to be done right now. We get the whole upstairs of their house and we will probably live there for about 6 months and then go rent a house until we can get our credit repaired and score built back up so we can then build our new house out in the country. I will NEVER get in this kind of credit mess again though NEVER! I will never own another credit card and if I don't have the money for it......I won't be buying it!
Sorry that was so long!
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