Long story short - bought our dream house in Las Vegas in 2005 (one of the worst economies in the nation now especially for real estate). We knew we were buying at the peak of the 'bubble', but since we had sold at the peak as well, we dumped tons of money down on it thinking the bubble would never sink below that. Isn't life great sometimes when it throws you unexpected curve balls? House was valued at over $500,000 when we bought it, but we got a 'fantastic' deal at $470,000. We owe about $330,000 on it and last time i checked market values in my neighborhood were around $220,000. We LOVE our house though and so have had no problem skimping by to make payments on a house we knew we were losing money on all these years. I'm a strong believer in honoring contracts and have been so upset at how good hardworking people who are making their payments are never approved for any type of modifications or deals by our good old trusty government or the lenders/banks who got bailed out! Anyways, got laid off in September so that was our very first month EVER being late on a payment and missing a payment. It totally stresses me out to not be paying on our house. We've since picked up a new job but it is out of state. We are lucky enough to be able to still stay here for now but he eventually needs to move within the next 6 months. We have so many questions? What's our best move? Do we want to try for a loan modification and try and rent our house. Our loan is an adjustable one (they wouldn't refinance us to a fixed one 2 years ago because our house wasn't worth as much as the loan) so that's scary to me, as well as the ideas of renters. Do we try and get a short sale? We're missing payments not only because we got laid off and didn't know our financial future right away, but also because it seems like no one at Citimortgage would ever talk to us before hand because we were good,current payers. This will be our 4th month of missing payments though. We went to one of Citimortgages 'events' a few weeks back, but all they did was ask for a bunch of information and a hardship letter. I read some of you say to have NO CONTACT with the banks. I'm just not sure which route we should take though. We obviously need to move out of state next year but we are so confused as to what we do about the house that isn't worth enough to sell on our own. Plus I don't think the rental market is great here and i doubt we could rent it for as much as we need to make the mortgage. It makes me sad that we invested so much money on this house and now we will have to walk away from it. It makes me mad that banks don't work with people like us who aren't stiffing them out of the entire bill like so many others have done. Citimortgage has made some good money on us. We put $113,000 down on the house and have been paying mortgage payments for almost 7 years (with 3 or 4 of those years being MORE than the allotted payment). Any advice you have for us would be MUCH appreciated.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks