arod314
May 11, 2009, 02:05 PM
On my current mortgage I owe roughly 234,000 which is on the DREADED Neg. Am. Loan. My minimum monthly due is 967.00. I also have a HELOC for 42,000. And of course the real estate market in south Florida has gone down the toilet in the past few years. My house is currently worth around 125K on the high end and I owe around 276,000 so you can see Im upside down about 150K. I have tried to short sale but the holder of my HELOC(bank of America) will accept 10% of the original 42K but will not report debt as settled, they will report remaining balance as a charge off and will send to collection agency for the difference, they will only report debt as settled if I can give them 85% of original 42,000(hello, if I could do that I wouldn't need to get out of property in the first place). And my first mortgage on the negative. Am loan is being increased by around 360.00 per month because I am only making the minimum monthly pymt because the way I see it, it doesn't make any sense to pay even the interest only option on a property that will never be worth what I currently owe. So what do I do? Do I tell both lenders to blow wind and just stop paying and let the home go into foreclosure, stay in the house for the next 18-24 months and sock away what I would be paying for the mortgages and then have around 25-30K saved and buy something else just in the wife's name(current home is in my name only)? I hate being in this situation and would like to do the right thing but the banks basically have a take what we offer or leave it attitude. I feel like a victim because I did nothing shady when I bought my home, the market just took a drastic nose dive and now Im stuck in a bad spot. Any advice is greatly appreciated.