New Member...at The End

[Joel Fraser]

Well Im new here, found this site a few days ago and its given me a lot of great info and even though I havent been able to post till now, it helped my wife and I make the decision to walk away from our house, or at least partially.Here is my story in a nut shell...for the last year our house has sucked us dry, my job is commission and its been declining and we have not been able to get ahead at all. OUr credit cards are growing and debt is sinking us, both financially but emotionaly, we almost divorced a few months ago, but after a few months of being separated, we have made it through this together. We have had the house on the market since Dec 1st and we have tried a short sale. Citi Mortgage is our bank and they have been a huge pain. We got a initial offer in jan, which was very low, but the bank after only 21 days denied it but coutnered at 188k, the offer was for 150k. The potential buyer backed out. we adjusted selling price to 179k and it sat for a few months, we finally got a full 179k offer on march 4th and from there it went to hell. Our contact at citi got transferred and it took weeks to get a new one and after weeks where she said she would have an answer, she quit. Now we waited anoter 2 weeks for the new contact. they ordered 3 BPO's during this time, 2 of them were for our asking price or lower and one was crazy high, like 240k. I havent even said that we finally heard from the bank this past thursday...thats right march 4th to june 13th. The new contact at citi has been better, but since the BPO he ordered came in really high he decided to counter at 200k, thats right 12k higher than their initial counter (how he could do this, im still stunned, but they did) so this buyer just walked on us yesterday. so we are back to square one. I even talked and pleaded with him and he told me to get another offer and we will go from there...I asked him how the heck he was going to accept another offer that is going to be probably lower than the one he just had, and he said that he would order a new BPO and see what happens. at this point we thought this was over.After stressing over this for months, my wife and i have decided to move out on monday. We have been approved for a townhome in a area of town (florida) that we love and we are going to stop paying our mortgage. I have read everywhere that the banks wont take your hardship seriously if you are still paying your bills and maybe this was something I should have done when we got the last offer, but im a good person and until now i thought it would be bad to do this. But im just spent, im drained and i need to protect my family. We are going to go into a very affordable townhome and pay down our debt within 6 months, while we will keep the house on the market and hope for another offer. The contact at citi, after i asked him to consider a deed in lieu that he will consider it at the end of summer if we dont get another offer and before we head to foreclosure. This is an extremely hard thing to do, but i know i can repair my credit if it goes to foreclosure, we are only 25 and 30, but what i cant chance is losing my sanity and my wife again. We need to get out for quality of life, we are almost down to our last $ in savings and our credit cards are high. we need to start healing that part of our lives and together. WE hope that we get another offer and that citi will take it seriously this time, he promised he would rush the next offer through, but we will see. He is a new guy for us and have been extremely helpfull since coming on, but im still sceptical. I have learned a lot about what could happen from this site and im glad that i found it. if anyone has any recommedations that would be great, but we are in the final minutes of this ordeal, at least this stage. homes are not selling fast in my hood, so we will see if it will sell better without us in it. I do have one question, should I pay homewoners ass fees? I know i need to keep insurance and i dont have an escrow for taxes, so i wont pay those either. i hope to have it sold and gone by end of summer but i dont know. I know my credit will start to suffer and im going to start tracking it now. we have our cars, our credit cards (almost all at a 0% right now) and we have our health. thats all i can ask for, but we need to get out so we dont go crazy anymore. I hope it works. thanks