It Makes No Sense

This morning my husband received a phone call from a woman who said a package had arrived at her home for him. The box was delivered to our previous address and the delivery information included his phone number, so she called to ask if he wanted to pick up the package.

The woman is the new owner of our previous home; the one we lost to foreclosure. She said she had only been living there for two weeks and had paid $120,000 for the home. We originally paid $212,900 and made several thousand dollars in upgrades to the home before the housing market in Phoenix collapsed. When my husband lost his job and had to settle for a much smaller salary in order to stay employed, we were no longer able to justify the expense of a mortgage that was so far upside down.

You may recall that I tried to negotiate a lower mortgage payment, a lower mortgage principle, or a short-sale; after several months of phone calls and paperwork, none of these options were approved by our lender.

Why was our lender content to sell the home to another party for current market value, but they wouldn’t offer us the same deal to stay in the home? What sense does it make to toss us out after two years of faithful payments simply because our situation had changed? The lender would have lost significantly less money had they negotiated a change in terms with us. That would have allowed us to continue owning the home at a rate that was more in line with the current economy and it would have saved time, effort and money on the part of the lender. Sounds reasonable to me.

I’m sure thousands of foreclosed-upon people are finding themselves in the same situation.