Questions

I feel like a ball of questions today...

I've had a few questions lately from folks around me as to why we decided to foreclose on our house, so I'm going to answer them as best as I can...


When we bought our home we both believed in the American dream; a house, a white picket fence and 2.5 children. What we didn't know was that the housing market would implode on itself within a year. Believe it or not, I was the hold out for quite a while hoping that we wouldn't have to take it to the extreme of having to file for foreclosure. I hoped, with no evidence supporting those hopes, that the market would rebound and we'd be ok. What's funny about it all is that I work in the real estate business, generating new home loans and basically have my finger on the pulse of the real estate industry. I heard folks around me talking about flipping, buying a new home and then foreclosing on their existing property, but I knew that that was not for us. We had the money and could have done it, but it's downright lying on a credit application and I'm not ok with that.

When we realized that this was our best option to eliminate our house as a liability, we only assumed we'd be in the house for a few months. We never dreamed that 12 months later there would still not be an NOD (Notice of Default) on file with no clear cut end in sight. We've been saving all of our regular mortgage payment money, as this will only happen once in our life. We were both raised to fulfill our obligations and trust authority, but sometimes you need to trust yourself. We know that in the long run what we did is the best for our family, but people still choose to judge. If your choice was to pay into a losing investment for the next 30 years, or cut bait, take the hit on your credit, and start to re-build, what would you do?