Living After Foreclosure

Few states have been hit harder by the foreclosure mess than Florida.  Properties in some areas are worth half of what they were at their peak.  A sizable number of underwater borrowers — those owing more than their homes are currently worth — have simply stopped making payments on their mortgages, using the extra money [...]

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Poor St. Joseph.  He can’t catch a break these days.
Folks are buying St. Joseph (husband of Mary) figurines and burying them, upside-down, near the For Sale sign in hopes of bringing a quicker sale.
Prayer sure doesn’t hurt but this is a bit off the deep end.  I had heard about this practice several months ago [...]

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Probably not too many people.  Though California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida are still the poster children for the housing carnage, Idaho, Illinois, and Oregon are up-and-comers.  Foreclosures for February 2009 are up 30% from February 2008 levels.  Seven hundred thousand properties owned by banks haven’t been put on the market yet.
What may make the foreclosure [...]

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Maybe yours is too.
Over the past few years I’ve seen people occasionally posting a place for rent or sale.  Usually not too often.  For the past couple of weeks, I’m greeted each day with four advertisements for property.  Three of them are looking for renters.
It might be just that lots of people have vacancies now, [...]

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Here’s the last installment of Liz Pulliam Weston’s tips for dealing with the possibility of foreclosure:

Offer a deed in lieu of foreclosure. This is an option if the shortfall between your house’s value and what’s owed on it isn’t too much.  The lender can say, “Yeah, I’ll take the deed back, and you won’t owe [...]

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Liz Pulliam Weston wrote recently on steps to take if you’re facing foreclosure.  There are smart ways to go about it, and not-so-smart ways.  Here are three more of her suggestions with some of my comments:
Be realistic.  A house is just a house.  It may have a lot of sentimental value but when all is [...]

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Liz Pulliam Weston wrote recently on steps to take if you’re facing foreclosure.  There are smart ways to go about it, and not-so-smart ways.  Here are her first three suggestions with some of my comments:

Make a budget.  If there are places that can be cut in your budget that will make the difference between losing [...]

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Free Money Finance recently had an acquaintance of his go into foreclosure, and the signs of trouble were clear in retrospect.
People don’t advertise that they’re facing foreclosure, at least not outwardly.  Even if money is getting really tight, people can compartmentalize the worry when they’re interacting with others.  One family I know had a fairly [...]

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