Chickened out and paid the bill

[ssmdem]

That's smart to stay in your house as long as you possibly can. If you wait until you are forced to leave, the new owner will be right behind you so hopefully the place won't fall into disarray.

Do they only force you to leave when it's been sold?

[bulletproof77]

Sounds alot like our neighborhood. My kids have several friends here that they will still see in school everyday. I don't know what to tell them to say. We plan on staying as long as possible as well.

The pool is what kills me. Without the pump running every day and the chlorine being kept up, I know it's just going to kill it - and living by a lake, we get alot of snakes, which are just going to LOVE the new water hole!

You may want to pump the water out and leave it dry when you leave..I had a large pool and when my home was foreclosed, I drained it completely. I was more worried about liability and mosquito issues..It's a biggie for Code Enforcement here..

[researchnerd]

...I could honestly not think of a good reason. That was the turning point for us right there. It's about taking a long term view.

Now with my husband out of work for about 7 months, we are faced with losing our home. It's more emotional for me than I thought it would be. I have scraped together the payments for the past six months but just had to write a check to the IRS for $3,000 (long long story). I realized that yes, I could possibly scrapr the mortgage payment together again this month but definitely not in May so why make the payment? Why not begin to build our little nest egg for when the house is foreclosed on? Fortunately, we did not reaffirm so we can walk away. It was hard not to make the payment yesterday but I am taking my own advice and taking a long term view. We can no longer afford our home and it was dumb on our part to buy so much house and depend on two salaries to maintain it.

Well, that's our story. OP, I hope you are able to make the right decision for you and your family.

This is a lot like our story. I made the mortgage payment online in January, but we already knew it was the last one we'd be able to make - DH was laid off 2 years ago, and we've burned through our savings and maxed out credit cards to keep paying the mortgage. Suddenly I couldn't think of a good reason to make that last payment, so I cancelled it and put the money in savings. I have never in my life missed a mortgage payment, intentionally or otherwise, and I thought it was going to feel awful, but it actually felt kind of good...like I was in control of our finances for the first time in two years. We moved out in late Feb, to a nice rental house that costs less than half our mortgage payment. I started sleeping better almost immediately.

We have learned the same lesson you did: Never again will we buy a house that we need two incomes to pay for. We've lost our home - the pretty 5-acre farm we'd dreamed about for years, the place I thought my DS would always come home to and bring his kids, the place I thought we'd retire. I don't ever, ever want to go through that again. Now we're getting foreclosure notices from an attorney, and we are heading for BK. We'll be picking up the pieces for a long time, but at least now there is light at the end of a very long tunnel.

[zpbk13]

ssmdem - you can google the foreclosure timeline for your state. It will tell you how much time you will have in your house once it has been sold at action. Some states allow more time than others. I think in Ohio we get 30 days after the confirmation but I'm not 100% sure. I've read so much information about foreclosures, I feel like it's starting to ooze out of my brain!

reach - why did you not stay in your original house until it was foreclosed on? I am just curious as we intend to stay until we get notice that the house has been sold. I am putting the money aside in a separate account so we are ready to go (apartment or rental house) when the time comes.

[researchnerd]

reach - why did you not stay in your original house until it was foreclosed on? I am just curious as we intend to stay until we get notice that the house has been sold. I am putting the money aside in a separate account so we are ready to go (apartment or rental house) when the time comes.

In my state (GA), the laws offer very little protection from foreclosure. It's a non-judicial state, they only have to provide 14 days notice of a foreclosure sale date, and if they want to they can request that you vacate immediately upon the sale. We thought about sticking it out as long as we could to save money, but the thought of potentially only having 2 weeks to find a new place to live and move sounded incredibly stressful. We decided to be pro-active instead of reactive, just for our own peace of mind. It helped that we found a really nice rental house in our price range and school district within just a few weeks.

If we lived in a state that offered more of a waiting period, or if we didn't have kids, we might have made a different choice. But this was the right way for us to handle it, even in retrospect - we just started to get foreclosure letters from an attorney last week. Even though we could have saved another couple of mortgage payments, at least I can sleep at night now.

[zpbk13]

I see. Thanks for sharing. I am a bit nervous as to how long this process will take in our case. Fortunately, it's hubby and I. My son will be moving into his own apartment and my sis and her new baby that have been staying with us are moving with other relatives. So no small kiddos to consider. I have already found a couple of apartments that I am interested in so hopefully we will be ready. What is funny is that I have two friends that have gone through foreclosure and both homes took over 2 years to foreclose. I can't imagine being in our house that long just waiting but I guess we will see.

[researchnerd]

Yeah...when we talked about it in December we thought about the possibility that it might take a year to foreclose because the lenders are so swamped, and how great it would be to live there rent-free for so long. But ultimately we just decided to move on instead of waiting indefinitely for the proverbial other shoe to drop.

In Ohio, you actually have quite a bit of protection. Your lender has to file a judicial foreclosure through the court, instead of just selling your house on the courthouse steps (that's literally what they do here). You then have 28 days to file an answer, then they have to have 3 appraisals done, and after that you'll have 30 days minimum before your court date. But from what I've read it looks like you could have as much as 5-10 months. After foreclosure the sheriff has to evict you, which can take another 6 weeks...it could easily go on for a year from start to finish. Hang in there!

[zpbk13]

Wow! I didn't realize it could happen so quickly in Georgia and that you get so little notice.

I'm just amazed at how long the two families I know have been able to stay in their homes. I have a relative that that is being foreclosed on and they have been in their home about two years. In all three cases the homes are in Shaker Heights which has received national attention with all the foreclosures in that city. I am hoping to get a full year. I am also hoping there is a federal extension for unemployment that will cover my husband. He is close to 55 and does not have real marketable skills. His brother has been out of work for over a year and half. It's not looking pretty in my neck of the woods. I'm grateful I have a good job but I work for a law firm and anything could happen. I'm so glad we filed bk when we did!