Any thoughts/ideas on how to keep my house (temporarily)?

[AlmostAmos]

As you can see in my sig, I have filed Ch 7 and am waiting on a discharge. We did NOT reaffirm our house & wouldn't even consider doing so as it is WAY under water. We haven't paid a payment on our 1st/2nd since January. Both mortgages are with the same lender - CitiMortgage.

On our SOI, we said that we were going to retain & pay the mortgages as we were working on a mod prior to filing. Since filing, we haven't heard ANYTHING from Citi so obviously we aren't working on the mod still or paying them anything.

I would like to stay in this house for a while, "renting" it if that makes sense. What do you think Citi would say if I called them & tried to work out something to start paying once again? They already wrote off our 2nd. There is no way I would even consider paying the 2nd but I would pay the payment on the 1st as it is approximately what I would pay in rent anyway.

Thoughts on strategies to work something like this out? Am I wasting my time?

[AngelinaCat]

Had you asked this before you stopped paying the First, I would have advised, just keep paying the first mortgage as you had, and ignore the second.

Since you have not been paying either since February, I do not know what to advise. 'Hub and I did not have these issues in our BK to deal with.

However, as you can plainly see elsewhere on this board, people are desperate to get out of their homes, and get their names off the deeds because of liability. If you are able to stay in your home, you may be in a good situation with the lender. Talk with them, and see what you can do.

We see abandoned homes all over the place in our county. The mortgage holders, the banks, are the ones holding the bag. Those 'bags' are going to break one of these days.

I don't know what else to suggest, my friend, but see what you can do.

Good wishes go your way..

[tcreegan]

Hello AlmostAmos,

Since filing, we haven't heard ANYTHING from Citi

Citi is restricted by the automatic stay from contacting you. You have to contact them.

You can ask them about staying and paying, but my guess is they will give you a notice of default and say they are going to proceed with foreclosure....but depending on the market in your area they might not actually proceed for some time. Some folks are posting 2 years or more on foreclosures. Worst case scenario you get a few months rent free. Best case scenario they say, sure, stay and pay.

Good luck on this,

Tom in Colo

[AlmostAmos]

Thanks for the advice/comments so far. Yeah, we realize they aren't allowed to contact us first. But, we tried to contact our old contact in the mod dept (office of the pres) and was told "we'll get back to you". Well, we did this 2 or 3x before we finally gave up. I'm not sure which dept to contact. The BK dept? I'll try to contact them again this week and will report back. This should be an entertaining exercise!

[JSchrader]

If you could work something out with the bank to rent the house, that would be great. Unfortunately, banks are often uninterested in making these kind of arrangements, even though it might be in their best interest. Often times banks are very slow about foreclosing on properties, though. As Angelina said, you might be able to stay in your house for several months, still. In the mean time, you should develop some contingency plans.