Living After Foreclosure

In many ways the story of a 103-year-old saved from eviction is heartwarming.  Deputies and movers in Atlanta, GA, couldn’t go through with tossing a 103-year-old woman and her 83-year-old daughter on the streets after her home of 53 years was foreclosed on. Kudos to the folks sent to do the unpleasant task for not [...]

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… is also good for the gander. It’s entertaining to see the tables turned on a bank for once.  After a bank wrongfully foreclosed on a homeowner who apparently never even carried a mortgage against the property, a judge ruled in the homeowner’s favor and ordered the bank to pay the homeowners’ legal fees.  When [...]

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The artist formerly know as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince” — also known as, well, Prince — was almost in foreclosure on a piece of land in Chanhassen, MN.  Apparently the artist made a last-minute $368,000 payment to “balance out the mortgage” and hence take the property off of the auction block. Getting to [...]

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This post over at Debt Kid is funny, in a macabre sort of way.  It illustrates first-hand how badly you should try to avoid being the person selling short in a short sale. In a nutshell, a short sale is a sale of a property for less than what’s owed on it.  It’s meant to [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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