19 July 2009

scratch that

well, fuck me dead. please disregard my last post.

the house is in foreclosure. not because of anything i did, mind you. my dad has a heloc on this place. he hasn't made a payment on it since last october. so, the bofa said enough is enough. understandable, right?

thing is, we didn't find out from him. we found out because wen'l decided to open a piece of mail marked "resident". i never open that shit. it's how we found out about this foreclosure. my dad probably wouldn't have told us about it until we had a week to be out of here, and i'd have kept paying the goddamned mortgage in the meantime.

the real kicker, however, is this - he's declared bankruptcy. he had to borrow the money from my brother to do it. my mother left him about $400k when she died, three years ago today. add the aforementioned heloc, and he's burned through approximately $450k in those three years, plus fuck knows how much more debt that i have no idea about. she also left him the sole owner of this house, which at the time she died probably would have sold for about $600k. if he'd sold it then, and he knew he was going to move to michigan before she died probably, he'd have walked with about $350k.

i praise the fsm that i didn't get his head for $. my brother got a wee bit of his impulsiveness, but it hasn't cost him anything, really. and i definitely didn't get it. i drive a 13 year old car with 134,000 miles on it. i've babied it its whole life, and *knocking wood* i'll get a few more years out of it. i'd like to pay cash for my next car, or at least have a huge down payment and get the thing paid off in like 2 years.

the bankruptcy could potentially buy us some more time in this house. i need to somehow impress it upon my father that he needs to let things drag out a bit. it could potentially be a year (well, a year from 06.29.09 anyway), with me paying no mortgage. i'd be sitting on a pile from that. moving would be painless and i'd have a nice rainy day fund AND a high def tv. so keep your fingers crossed, k?

speaking of electronics, wen'l cashed in his cisco rewards points on a ps3. :D not even all of them, actually. the next "purchase" will be a nikon digital slr. i cannot wait.
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2 comments:

Friðvin said...

shit, I need to come back to this tomorrow. drama and tequila don't mix.

know this: i love you and hope things work out for the best.

(and I will come back tomorrow and read this.)

5:47 PM PDT
Friðvin said...

OK, this is definitely a potential jewel in the rough.... the part about not paying on the mortgage and just letting it pile up. I have no idea myself how long a foreclosure takes.

I am in a similar situation due to some credit card cash advances I did about 3 years ago to keep my business floating. It didn't work. I got screwed by a couple of clients and was left holding the bag on about $150k in credit card debt. And of course, that also meant I was jobless since the biz was screwed.

Then in Jan/07 I got a great job at an agency where I made overtime, and there was LOTS of that. The OT was paying my mortgage! I was trying to pay a little here and there on the cards until I got the early warning mid-year that we might lose the client by year-end. I started stockpiling every dime I could, quit paying anything on the business-related credit cards and was ready to weather the storm.

Turns out we did indeed lose the account and I was unemployed from late December into early May, so was txrad since he was working at the same place when we both got laid off. (He's still unemployed.)

The two of us drawing unemployment was enough to get by on, so I never needed to touch the bank wad. But because I thought we might have to sell the house I started using that stash to renovate: new roof, new windows, new carpet & paint (in & out) and tile floors in the kitchen & den.

Then as luck would have it, I got a job working from home just as I'd spent nearly every dime getting the house ready to sell.

During this time, the creditors have never stopped calling or sending letters. The banks have long ago sold off the debt to collectors who in turn have sold it off again and again. I have quit answering the phone when I see an 800/888 caller ID.

Supposedly, in Texas I think they can't legally come after you after 4 years so I'm biding my time. This is not my preferred way out but I'm kind of anxious about talking to a bankruptcy lawyer and would rather do that as a last resort... if I get sued. But I'm not sure that's going to happen because it's probably not worth the expenses that the collectors would have to incur.

The other bummer is that supposedly, if I walk away without ever paying, the IRS treats that as a gift or something and I would owe taxes on that amount which would SUCK. It would probably be cheaper to go to a lawyer and see if I could settle with all of them for 20-cents on the dollar or whatever. But then I'd probably still owe taxes on what was written off.

What scares me is that I don't know that I'd qualify for bankruptcy since I have a job and could afford to pay SOMETHING each month, but I'd ben paying well into retirement which isn't going to cut it.

Hope your Australian thing works out after you sit on a few months of mortgage money. That would be very cool indeed.

1:15 PM PDT

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