When to rent & move....

[matthewsmom]

I will be filing BK @ some point. Will be surrending my home (have an ARM that sucks & it's worth less than I owe). My attorney told me I can move any time, but that I could just stay in my home as long as possible to live 'free'. However, if I do that my credit will be total crap. What apt rental co. will rent to me then??? Right now my credit is probably 'ok' enough to rent. So, should I stay or should I go?? How did ya'll do it?????

Thanks!!

[Runnin on empty]

I'm sure that every situation is unique. My wife and I decided last night that we are going to sell our home, use the proceeds to pay off the mortgage/2nd mortgage and move into an apartment. Then we will look into filing.

[BassBoy]

With renting an apartment, most apartments would like for you to be discharged before you apply. You do not want that debt to show on credit report. Other apartments may want you to be discharged for a certain time frame (i.e. one year) and then apply.

On the other hand, you could look at homeowners that rent their property. If you inform them of your situation up front, they may be willing to work with you or will tell you no.

Either one of the above scenarios could be the case. Your best bet is look at what's available and ask questions about how the apartments or homeowners handle such cases. It's the only way you'll know because every place is different.

When you should move depends on you. If youfind a place that you like, you may decide to jump on it. Or you can stay in your home until you receive notice from the sheriff to vacate the premises. Again, this is a decision you'll need to make, so do a lot of diligence and put in plenty of thought so you can make a well informed decision.

That aside, our experience with this sitaution had a great outcome. Some of the apatments we looked at wanted us to be discharged first and some wanted us to be discharged 6 months or 1 year. Well, an apartment was a last resort because we have 2 children and no way would we want to coop them up in some 2 bedroom apartment with no yard to play in. Then, we looked at houses and we found a very nice duplex to rent with a wonderful homeowner who takes very good care of his properties. The house is very affordable and the homeowner didn't care about our financial situation. As long as we felt comfortable making the rental payments, then the place was ours. He even let us postpone our move in date so we could send him partial payments to cover firsts months rent and security deposit. We took the place because we knew that we wouldn't find another place as affordable and as nice as this place. Believe me, we looked at complete dumps that were more money. BTW, water and sewer are included whereas the dumps did not include these. We moved out in March of this year and our home is set for auction on 01/05/07.....so.......we moved out very quickly. We made this decision and this will have to be a decision you may have to make. Go with your gut. If you can move, I'd say go for it. If you want to stay for as long as you can and sock away some cash, then do that. The decisions are yours.

[AMISLANDER]

A lot of times, apartment communities are more lenient than you might think....there are now so many people in bk. My personal opinion is that they look at your job stability as well as past rental payment history.

I've had evictions back in 2000-2001 when all my cc debt came into play but from 2003 to 2005, when I filed, my rent was always on time. I filed in Oct. '05, was discharged early 2006, and moved into an apt. community this past summer. I told them about my bk, they did a background check and I was approved, even with income $100 a month lower than what they required.

So, you can take these kinds of things into consideration in accordance with your situation.

[HHM]

I would presume most apartments would want you discharged before agreeing to rent.

However, the other concern that should be voiced, is "where are you going to get the money for the deposit?"

The answer to that question may dictate how long you stay in your house. If you need a little time to gather some money for a deposit (with a BK, you should plan on at least giving an amount equal to two months rent), then wait until you are about 30-45 days from the auction date of your house to go apartment hunting.

Note, just because your surrendering, the bank will still have to go through the foreclosure process and most bansk won't start the foreclosure process until your discharge...so you will have time.

[pambysue]

Same predicament

Hello Matthewsmom
I have the same predicament as you. I am surrendering my home in bankruptcy. I have received an acceleration notice from my mortgage company. However, I am waiting until December before filing my bankruptcy because of lost overtime, I want to be below the median income for my state of NY.
Anyway, I found a nice duplex for me & my daughter and put a deposit on it last month. I paid this months rent on the first and informed the rental people that I would not be in until next month. Of course, they wanted this months rent and I dont blame them. They could have very easily have rented it to someone else as it is very nice and in a terrific, safe neighborhood! But, I wanted some time to save a little money for furniture (2nd hand) and necessities before I am in there. I haven't paid my mortgage for several months due to a mental condition (OCD & anxiety disorder) that caused me to make some stupid money choices. Anyway, I was nervous about finding another place to live, but I know it's only a matter of time before I have to move and when this place was willing to rent to me even with all of my financial issues from the past, I had to grab it while i could! I guess they looked at the fact that I have had a good job for 21 years and even though I have been irresponsible with finances, I have never lost time at my job. I swear this is going to be a new beginning for me & my daughter! A fresh start is what we need and rent is going to come first, along with food & utilities. No more careless tossing away of my hard earned cash!
I wish you all the best! It will all work out just fine no matter what you choose to do. I agree that sometimes staying where you are and saving up some cash is best, but if the 'right' place comes along, you have to grab it when you can!

[GoingDown]

A lot of times, apartment communities are more lenient than you might think....there are now so many people in bk. My personal opinion is that they look at your job stability as well as past rental payment history.

I've had evictions back in 2000-2001 when all my cc debt came into play but from 2003 to 2005, when I filed, my rent was always on time. I filed in Oct. '05, was discharged early 2006, and moved into an apt. community this past summer. I told them about my bk, they did a background check and I was approved, even with income $100 a month lower than what they required.

So, you can take these kinds of things into consideration in accordance with your situation.

Yeah, I've found most landlords in this area (Phoenix, Arizona) to be very accommodating and helpful. For one thing, apartments are overbuilt and the vacancy rate is very high, so if they were too picky in terms of creditworthiness, their apartments would just sit empty with no one paying them any rent. So, they are more than willing to take a chance, most of the time. The key is to look for rentals in the local newspaper and try to find a private owner (not a corporate owner) of a small 4 plex or duplex. They will typically bend over backwards to rent to you, even with absolutely horrible credit, if you flash some cash at them. Some of the small private apartment owners don't even check credit. A lot of them are new to the business-- they just recently bought a second home or an apartment building as an investment, and they hope to break even by renting it out for a few years until they can sell it and make a profit. They're pretty easy to deal with, because they don't really know what they're doing most of the time.