Thinking about -gulp- surrendering our home

[fltoo]

Have to laugh at that. My homeowner's association pulls out perfectly good flowers and plants new ones every season so that the color matches the season!!! Insanity.

Joe, I am one of the logical ones that knows things will turn around, but regardless of whether they do or not, we all here need to grab the fresh start BK affords us and be prepared for future bad times.

That means living without debt and purchasing only when you have the cash, including cars and large down payments on housing.

I know so many people, friends and family, doing extremely well in this "bad" economy. They all have one thing in common. They have NO DEBT except for their mortgages and they have so much equity in their houses that they can ride out the bad RE market.

Misery loves company so we tend to congregrate around people in the same situation as us.

Think about the Great Depression. How many of us have grandparents that share their stories of their huge struggle to survive? But, they did survive and most of them did very well in their retirement. It was the people that were leveraged to the hilt and buying on margin that jumped!!!

I never post to threads here where people are asking how to buy a new car or get a new cc post BK for fear of what I might type, LOL.

And...it is so sad to see repeat BK's.

I know some people have extreme medical bills or a hardship that resulted in BK, but lets face the facts. Most financial problems and BK's are due to purchasing things that we just can't afford, on credit.

[Help!]

walk away from debt completely and into freedom. Homeownership is a misnomer and a scam.

I'm with you! I love renting and I can't imagine having that burden again. We would have been better off if we had never bought a home.

[Help!]

Gas prices, raising prices on everything else, insurance premiums ready to escalate, unemployment, a crashing airline and auto industrial base- how can logical folks believe that all of that will turn around, much rebound? The world is changing badly and rapidly...

I agree. It doesn't matter how many times Bernanke says everything's going to be fine... I'm seeing and hearing things from people around me that worry me. Watching people at Target and the grocery store, the looks on their faces, their conversations... living in a ghost town of a neighborhood of brand new homes, all of them empty (except the one we're renting). Things are not okay.

[bmrigs]

I agree. It doesn't matter how many times Bernanke says everything's going to be fine... I'm seeing and hearing things from people around me that worry me. Watching people at Target and the grocery store, the looks on their faces, their conversations... living in a ghost town of a neighborhood of brand new homes, all of them empty (except the one we're renting). Things are not okay.

Things are going to get alot worse. The govt and media tells everybody that its going to get better but they just dont want a panic on their hands just yet. These are the contractions before the birth of the New World Order. We have another few years left maybe.

[Minnymouth]

I have to agree with HHM,
If you want to keep the home, do not reaffirm, just keep making payments on it, later on you can walk away if need be.

Since you are upside down on the home, chances of things "TURNING AROUND"....... is going to be a long time coming. And home prices may never go back up to what they once were.....

Right now you are emotionally attached to the home, and its convenient with grandparents next door......

But think with a "business head".......

Questions to ask yourself...
1. Can we still afford this home? and knowing we will never recoop what we owe on it if we sell it down the road?
2. Are we going to spend the rest of our future here?
3. Are my jobs stable enough to support both mortgages?

I agree that things are going to "get worse" before they "get better"..... the price on EVERYTHING is climbing daily.....

[r.m]

[-Would a guy offering a rent/land contract see my business loss at face value and let me get a LC (and get some equity) for those 2yrs? ...or am I dreaming?]

It's impossible to know what the future holds, but only the *worst* properties have been offered LC over the last several years. That -could- change if credit continues to tighten. However, with the due on sale clause, most properties cannot be sold via this method. We can waste a lot of time debating over enforcement of that clause, but would you really want that hanging over your head?

[If you want to keep the home, do not reaffirm, just keep making payments on it, later on you can walk away if need be.]

So, what's being suggested here is: tidy up your financial situation now, work on rebuilding your credit, then tear it back down a couple years later if things don't work out. How many times do you want to go back to square one?

Get out of the rental business now. Forget about trying to salvage anything. You should know by now that it's not a game for part-timers. What a waste it would be to try to salvage one of the properties only to have future issues. Let it go!

You're over 26% upside down as it stands right now. Let's pretend that prices won't decline any further (in MICHIGAN... HAH!). How many years, and at what appreciation rate, would it take just to get back to even? If you really want the home AND you can honestly... HONESTLY... afford it without losing sleep, then maybe the 13 makes sense... but just for the home.