Housing Market Blues

I should be sleeping, but I can’t seem to get to sleep. I don’t like posting such personal information…but since I can’t quit thinking about it, I thought that maybe writing about it would help me to finally get to sleep.

We received a summons today from a Circuit Court in Florida notifying us that our primary mortgage lender is suing us. Basically it is their first step in foreclosing on our house in Florida. It has been on the market for almost 15 months and we were making double mortgage payments for 9 of those months before we ran out of our savings. We took out a second mortgage on that house to pay our down payments on our current home.

We had the house listed for about $20k less than we owe on the two mortgages. It is sad that we can’t sell it for $90k less than what it was appraised for just 2 ½ years ago. We did have one offer, but the contract was contingent on both banks accepting a short sale. The primary mortgage lender refused the short sale because it was for $20k more than what we owed them. We never heard from the second mortgage lender which would have lost about $50k if they accepted the short sale.

The summons said that we should hire a lawyer. I just had to laugh. If I could afford to hire a lawyer then I would be able to pay the monthly mortgage on the house. With the economy the way it is, I do not feel comfortable living from paycheck to paycheck. This past year has not been very good for us financially. After we informed the banks that we could no longer make payments, I had hoped to use our economic stimulus check for some needed car repairs. Instead I had to spend all $1100 on repairing a broken tooth. Now I am still faced with about $600 in car repairs.

It just seems wrong that the banks create the mortgage crisis by lending money to people who did not qualify, then their actions destroy the housing market, so that we get stuck with a home that will not sell, and yet the banks get federal funding to bail them out. I certainly don’t want the government to bail me out, I just don’t like it that the bank will get the house that we paid on for 10 years and also get extra money from the government because of their foreclosure expenses.

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