Today our mortgage is due to Chase Bank, and for the first time, we will not be paying it. As we enter the process of "strategic default," nothing has helped me more than reading others' testimonials and experiences. My husband and I got engaged in 2005 and purchased our first home in Sacramento that same year. It is a very modest, 2 bedroom English Tudor in a great neighborhood. Our mortgages (80/20) are for $450k, and the house was recently assessed at 285k. Our payment, including taxes, is $3500 per month. Our neighbor rents out the exact style house next door for $1300 a month. We have known for some time our house would be underwater, we just didn't know how much. For at least 2 years, it was easy to delude ourselves that OUR house probably didn't drop in value as much, or OUR neighborhood is outstanding, and thus at least partially immune. Plus, both of us make excellent incomes in the secondary education and health care sectors, with very little likelihood of layoffs or pay cuts, etc. Frankly, it was easier to just keep paying, and ignore the issue. After all, we do love this house. I'm not sure how we really arrived at the decision to walk way, but once we realized what we needed to do, we proceeded without hesitation. Maybe it's that thing I've felt in the pit of my stomach for the past several years, when I wrote out that check each month, or when lying down to sleep at night. For the last 6 months, I made my husband write that check. Our investment, this little house, was now a bottomless pit, from which we could never expect to emerge. Or even if we did, even if we ENJOYED paying Chase, it would come at the staggering cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I just can't do that to our daughter. I just can't do that to my elderly self, whoever she may be. Maybe the last straw came when the neighbors across the street sold their house for exactly $450, a much larger and more up-to-date house; the same price we bought ours for. Or maybe the last straw was that my husband tried to refinance with 2 different Banks this summer with zero success. Or that we can't really save for the future. Whatever it was, we decided to stop paying on this bad investment.
Our first appointment with a real estate lawyer is next week, and we also have a CPA to help out on the tax issues. We haven't even tried for a loan modification, and I don't think we'll try a short sale, either. I just feel too discouraged after reading how impossible these are to obtain for folks with the capacity to pay. Moreover, I really don't feel up to having a realtor show the house, haggle with the Bank, etc. all to save my credit score. I live in a non-recourse state, for which I thank the gods every day. I'm ready to confront any repercussions: Chase will have to be content with the house, but Nation Star, the second lender, might come after our first born child, and in all likelihood we make too much for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. But chances are Nation Star will not come, and if they do, we're still better off negotiating a settlement than throwing $3500 to Chase each month.
We are getting all our ducks in a row in preparation for an unknown period of poor credit. New Subaru Outback is sitting in the driveway mere feet away. My credit score was 784 yesterday. Good bye, credit score. Now that we've got the car, we won't need you anytime soon. I'll see you back in a few years (or even less).
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