Walking away,now what?

[spooky]

Eating in the dark!

Hey, I also live in MI, our bank jacked up our mtg payment, and due to our situation being out our control, we hired HMN in Mount Clemens. so far its sounds like that things might work out, we shall see. They were able to help my brother. We paid 1% of what our mortgage was, and they got on it right away. Dec 15 we hired them at that point we were 90 days late. we don't ever answer the phone, I have my cell phone programmed, so i know whose calling. i send all their crap they send to me to the Negotiator. I figure they can have the house, I can move, and I am saving. we TRIED to work it out before it got to this point. Now were 10K behind, 5 months- i don't care. They will either loose $ now by adjusting, or later when they try to sell it Sherriffs sale. Good luck. I sleep just fine.

[spooky]

Also, I would NEVER give the bank my Grocery $$. Tell them to change their ways, not you. You are trying your best- ARE THEY?? NOT.You sound like a responsible person,I know how it feels, but in the end , they go home to their full dinner table, and you sit and stare at the walls. Save$ if you can, and be sure YOU define your life- not them. Esp. if you tried to work it out. What gets me about your sutuation, is that 20 years doesn't account for anything in your favor. But remember, they are a BANK! spooky

[broken64]

Thanks spooky, we have decided to stop paying and start saving so that we will have a nest egg for moving purposes. Walking away sucks, but getting on with our life and being able to live a little will be a revelation!!! So off to yet another chapter of our life
:-)

[liboton21]

NACA works guys. I was approved by BOA thru NACA last 4/19 but they have not included prop tax and insurance so I went to the STD event in Las Vegas. I'm currently on BK7 awaiting 341 and BOA thru NACA approve my mod for 2% on the 1st including PITI and 3.25 on the 2nd. I have to send them an authorization letter so they can modify my loan. My total payment is $3338/mo for both I can easily breathe as soon as my unsecured debts are discharge. But NACA proposed is $2560 for both so I scheduled to NACA for a negotiator to take a look on my loan. My discharge date is 4/19 I still have two months to play BOA's game. BTW, former loan with CW 6.25 I/O fixed for 10 years.

[broken64]

I have a case number with FHA. On BOA request I contacted them and worked with a lady there on our situation. She advised me not to pay or deal with any outside agencies regarding loan mods. She said that if BOA wouldn't work with me then I would just be out the money and into eventually a worse situation. I am confused to say the least. I don't want to pay some one to negotiate a loan mod, only to have a huge balloon payment in 5 years, that is if they were to get any where with BOA!

[liboton21]

NACA is free, while someone got the mod but it will not work for others especially if homeowners have two properties.

[Bob Walker]

Broken,

My family and I are right there with you. See my thread titled "Is it time to throw in the towel".

I thought that a Ch7 BK would remove a lot of the major debt we had too, all of it mostly related to when our small business went under, but sadly we learned that much of that debt didn't go away and the debt we thought would under the law didn't either and now we continue to be burdended by the changes in the BK laws.

We were able to keep our house and all of our assets at the time, but I am learning real quick is that the only way to truly get that Fresh Start is to eliminate all areas that didn't get eliminated in the BK.

For us, we want to move on and now for us foreclosure does appear the best option to eliminate the rest of the debt. The banks may have gotten bailout money, but now we are going to force them to eat some of it from the short sale of our home.

[broken64]

Bob I hear ya, at the time of our discharge and closing, my husband was laid off and was supposed to be called back, but never was. 5 months after that he found work, thus at a way lower wage. Our business is closing due to it tanked in the meantime also. With the new income, all the budgeting in the world is not helping.. We had to face the fact we are house poor and since they won't do anything for us, we have to walk away. We have 2 children, one in college and one in 10th grade, we have to think of them. This is not living, every dime going into the house, no extra to fix a vehicle if needed (and that has happened 3 times in the last month alone!) We will be the third house here, 1 in front of us, 1 to the side of us, and then ours. Even if we tried to hold on the home is depreciating with every other one that is becoming foreclosed on! It is time to actually enjoy the fresh start the BK has given us and start breathing and living again.

[Backlyn]

We are awaiting chapter 7 discharge, however, the trustee is claiming we have assets now. We are desperately trying to hang onto my SUV. Anyway we are keeping our home as we have 19 years paid into it and roughly 9 left. Our first mortgage is easily afforded with taxes and insurances included but the second is our issue. CTW/BOA had both but CCO just took over our second. We are at 6.25% on first and 7.75% on second. My husband is in construction and is having a horrible time with work. It would be great if we could negotiate down things to make the home more affordable. We plan to retain the property. Up until now anyway we are current on both and still not discharged. Any idea what we can do? By the way I am extremely impressed on feeding a family of four for under $100/week. I cook and I can't even do it.

[hedgecat]

I have a home that is mortgaged through Countrywide/BOA. I stopped making payments in October of last year so we're up to 5 months now without any payments. They sent a kind of scary letter in January but it doesn't seem to mean anything. I WANT them to take back my house. They told me they couldn't do anything at all for me until I stopped paying for 3 months. After that, because I didn't want a loan mod, they wanted me to short sale it and now they tell me that it's at least 4-6 months on short sale before they'll foreclose or do a deed-in-lieu. In the meantime, I've filed Chapter 7 and now they can't do anything until my discharge.

My point is that from my personal experience, BOA has no idea what they're doing. They have no interest in really helping you since their customer service reps seem to know nothing. When you do get a knowledgeable person, they seem just as frustrated with their system as you are. Anyway, I know my situation is different because I just filed and that basically ties them up from doing anything for 3 months while waiting for discharge, but I don't think you'll have to worry about leaving your house anytime soon.

[broken64]

Backlyn, I know how you feel, we have been here for 20 plus years and gutted and remodeled the entire house, but our rates are at 6.75 on first and 11 on 2nd and have two empty properties adjacent to us so there is no regaining value in ours. We are just really tired of banging our heads against the wall and like I said previously we are ready for our true fresh start. We have realized that although this is our home it is just a house and where our family is is our true home. It sounds like you are able to make your payments easily, which job loss and regaining at lower wages we have had to reevaluate the situation. hedgecat you are so correct with your analogy of BOA, I just stopped answering my cell, half the time when I did answer it I couldn't understand what the heck they were saying anyway because they were from another country! End of next month I will start answering here and there, I really don't care. They had mentioned short sale as a possible option in the past. I told them we never reaffirmed the debt and if it came to that we would walk away with no interest in that kind of negotiation. The person responded Oh I see you have been discharged from Chapter 7 so your right short sale would not be of an interest to you, Uh duh!!! What idiots, they can have it. We will stay here as long as we can and save as much as we can before we have to get out. We shall see:-)

[Snax]

. . I sleep just fine.

As we all should. ;)

My wife has been very hesitant to give into the idea of letting our house go into foreclosure while we prepare to file ch7, but I think she will rest a little easier tonight after I pointed out yet another major flaw in the construction of our house that will ultimately lead to some very expensive repairs we simply cannot afford to fix.

So for now, I am doing my best to avoid overtime at work so that we can remain under the median income when we will be ready to file in June. At the same time, we will be throwing our normal mortgage payment into a seperate savings account to cover moving and BK expenses.

I look at it this way: If there is no equity to hold onto in your home, it's better to lump it into the chapter 7, because some day you may need to move anyway, possibly with negative equity still - and you won't be able to file a 7 again for years. Hedge your bet and ditch that liability, otherwise you face marring your credit again down the road with either a short sale or foreclosure in addition to the BK. Might as well make it a single event and put it ALL behind you, leaving you better prepared for purchasing again when the time is right.

[goneunder]

Confusion alert!!! So some of you did NOT include the house in the BK and did NOT re-affirm so if you chose to walk several months after discharge it goes away as if it were included in the BK?

I am sitting in the same situation, I have no love for my house just dread the thought of moving again. I have been pushing for my lender to give me some sort of permenant modification (they were extremely eager and easy to work with on the initial mod, lowered my pmnt by $1,200!) because it is a lot like pissing in the wind, we will never get anywhere and still have to pay the HOA.

[CCsAreEvil]

Confusion alert!!! So some of you did NOT include the house in the BK and did NOT re-affirm so if you chose to walk several months after discharge it goes away as if it were included in the BK?

You must include any and all secured mortgage loans in your BK. Then on one of the forms, there's something like this:

( ) surrender
( ) reaffirm
( ) other __________

Surrender means you are giving up the house (obviously?). You either have already stopped mortgage payments or are going to stop once you file. There seem to be a number of filers which choose this since they will be vacating the property and finding another place to live. Mortgage lenders may actually do a motion/relief/stay which means they want to accelerate the foreclosure process.. which means you will have to vacate faster.

Reaffirmation means you will sign a legal document with the mortgage lender(s) saying you legally are still liable for the mortgage debt and will continue to pay on the notes. This in the worst choice for most people since most are upside down on their loans. And in some cases, the banks won't even do it anymore (I think Wells Fargo stopped doing them? I forget which bank).

Other (3rd) option is usually "Retain and Pay" (actual wording my lawyer filled in for the Other option). You are not giving up the house. You plan to keep up on the mortgage payments. This is what a lot more people seem to be doing these days, especially if there's a 2nd or even a 3rd! Some people are paying just the 1st lien/mortgage and stopped payment on the 2nd/3rd. This is a risk but most are willing do it to stay in their homes as long as possible. The risk is question is seeing if/when the 2nd/3rd lien holders will force a foreclosure on you. Others are even paying all liens (1st/2nd/3rd/etc) which is the safest bet but only if the value of the home is "above" the total owed across all liens (rare in this economy, especially if you are filing BK). This option may not be available in all states. However, we did it in Arizona.

Sorry for the long post.

[broken64]

We received certified letters Saturday from BOA. As of Saturday we were only one month behind so it was a little surprising to me since today is the new month and now we are officially 2 months behind. The paperwork is the threat of accelleration of the loans. After this comes the foreclosure right? I was hoping to be able to stay in here until July or August so that we may have a nice nestegg saved for the move. I realize it is a crapshoot as how long we will have but we can hope