[big_slacker]

Looks like the fuel economy thread got deleted. But anyway, gimp asked what happened.

If you missed part I. My wife and I bought a house at the peak of the boom here in Vegas. The value fell over 100k. Wouldn't be that bad of a situation except both of us really don't mix well with this city, really don't like living here and want to get out. The house had us trapped.

We decided to do a voluntary foreclosure. Take a step back. After talking to the bank and getting the run around on short sales, deed in lieu, etc... we decided that was the way to go. It was a very tough financial call and not one we made lightly.

On to the present. As you would expect our formerly respectable (700+) credit rating has taken a nose dive. No lawsuit from the bank, our savings are fine, our retirement stuff is fine. We're moving to tahoe in 2 weeks, we bought an AWD car in anticipation of that. Financially we're doing very well and living comfortably.

Just like with the fuel economy thing, I really believe that life is too short to be unhappy. I mean it in a positive way. That doesn't mean blow all your dough or not plan a future because you might get hit by a bus tomorrow. It just means plan for the future but have fun today. I've been miserly before and pinched every penny and its just not worth it. C'mon, you really want to spend your driving life going the speed limit and short shifting? :cheers

 

[Gimpdiggity]

So slacker, are you still actually living IN Vegas right now??

What have you ended up doing for housing in Tahoe??

The reason I asked was because I didn't want to bring it up in the open forums, but I wondered if you had found a way out of that situation...because I thought your somewhat cavalier attitude about spending on a vehicle was an indicator that maybe you had ended up not having to go through the foreclosure, and I wasn't able to find anything on a quick search, so I shot you that PM.

I'm glad you're happy, and I understand about feeling trapped by a house. I got stuck with one that I didn't want after a divorce, and went through many of the same things.

I also am much happier now that I've gottent he whole thing taken care of.

 

[Stick N Move]

Yep, Tahoe completey owns if your the out doors type. Very beautiful too.

 

[FZSilver]

Cool, when I get older I want to move up there too. There is so much nice land up there.

 

[big_slacker]

In Vegas still. We're in a short term house here and renting in tahoe. We're actually having trouble finding a place with a garage if you can believe that (in a place where it snows for half the year), and we might end up with a vacation rental for a month or two until something decent pops up.

If I seem cavalier about buying a nice car after a major financial setback, its because I'm happy to have the weight off my shoulders and proud that I'm able to recover so quickly. I made a pretty bad call against my better judgement and it led to a bad situation. I'm celebrating not only getting out of the situation (and learning one hell of a lesson), but thriving despite the mistake.

 

[Stick N Move]

Are you looking at South Lake only? When I was in Truckee a few weeks ago they had a few forclosures up there. Worth a check.

 

[User Name]

Don't take this the wrong way, but what it sounds like you're saying is:

We made a bad financial decision on a house, the economy shit the bed, we decided we'd be happier without the house we bought in an area we didn't like, so we decided to stiff the bank when we figured out how to do it without loosing our savings and other assets.

I too bought a house at the height of the market, but I made sure I was comfortably able to make the payments, and even though my income has gone down drastically, and the value of the house has decreased somewhat, I'm still here making the payments. It's called responsibility.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it just seems a little wrong to brag about how well you're doing having just stiffed a bank for what I assume to be a substantial amount of money.

 

[baldheadeddork]

Don't take this the wrong way, but what it sounds like you're saying is:

We made a bad financial decision on a house, the economy shit the bed, we decided we'd be happier without the house we bought in an area we didn't like, so we decided to stiff the bank when we figured out how to do it without loosing our savings and other assets.

I too bought a house at the height of the market, but I made sure I was comfortably able to make the payments, and even though my income has gone down drastically, and the value of the house has decreased somewhat, I'm still here making the payments. It's called responsibility.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it just seems a little wrong to brag about how well you're doing having just stiffed a bank for what I assume to be a substantial amount of money.

I don't think he wasn't able to make the payments - he had to move because of a new job. A huge career opportunity, in fact.

If you're in that boat, your choice is to fork over the difference between the mortgage balance and the new market price (over $100K in his case), do what he did and mail in the keys, or stay in this place and hope you don't become one of the unemployed - and for Big Slacker that's a Michigan-esque 13.4% (by U3 - the low number) in Clark County, Nevada right now.

The bank or mortgage company also has a l-oooooo-t of culpability in lending what it did for that house two or three years ago. BS didn't get their money at gunpoint. The bank made the appraisal on the property that said it was really worth $100,000 more than it could sell for today. They offered the terms of the loan that meant Big Slacker had to put very little of his own money into the deal. I lived in one of the big bubble markets (South Florida) in 2005 and 2006, the peak years of the bubble, and if you had three working brain cells you could tell that these property prices were totally unsustainable. I have no sympathy for anyone who lent on those appraisals or terms.

Neither should you, because chances are exceptionally good that they're not losing on the foreclosure. They bundled and sold BS's mortgage with several thousand others years ago, to investors who were just as greedy as the banks and as willing to overlook the obvious problems in the housing market. BS will suffer more for the next seven years than the bank servicing his loan.

If making your house payments gives you such a strong feeling of moral superiority ("it's called responsibility") then go in peace. But if you ever get in BS's position, where you have a chance to move your career ahead by three or four levels and give your family a much more secure future - then you come back and tell all of us you're going to be responsible to the bank instead.

I don't have a problem with this because BS is simply putting the financial needs of himself and his family first. This is the way businesses have operated since approximately forever, and I think it's kind of refreshing to see individuals using this against companies for a change. If anything, BS was being a little too chivalrous to the bank. If he had asked my advice, I would have recommended that he stop making payments and stay in the house at least until the bank issued a date of foreclosure (which could have been about this time next year), bank the payments and try to get enough of a deposit together to buy a house in his new town before his credit rating got nuked.

 

[636blurr]

Im all for owning up to your responsibilities but I also agree with BHD post.
Banks and financial institutions spend all their time finding ways to skirt the law, the only fool are us overly honest fucks (the majority of people) and in the end usually are the losers.
However I do not get the American mentality, THey are worried about possibly losing tens of thousands of dollars on a home, but do not think twice about pissing away 40k on a fucking automobile that in 10 years will be worth a couple thousand dollars.
Talk about pissing your money away.


Slack is pretty cool though and I hope life works out alright for him, even though he is obviously becoming a yuppie snob moving to Tahoe.

 

[User Name]

The bank or mortgage company also has a l-oooooo-t of culpability in lending what it did for that house two or three years ago. BS didn't get their money at gunpoint.

And at the same time, no one held a gun to his (or anyone else's head) and forced them into loans for houses that they couldn't afford or that were valued far beyond reason.

I'm not meaning to be too critical, I understand both sides, but the biggest loosers in this whole mess are the ones who had nothing to do with it. My savings and investments were decimated by the economic fallout from the whole banking/foreclosure mess. When I was house shopping, they approved me for loan amounts far beyond anything I could realistically pay. I ended up borrowing barely 1/2 what they approved me for, and even then things have been tight from time to time.

It just rubs me a little wrong when someone basically boasts about how great their finances are as a result of them stiffing a bank which helped to cause the financial collapse that directly, and significantly, hurt my, and millions of other's, finances. Yes, the banks had a hand in the whole thing too, and perhaps the biggest hand, but so did people who got in over their heads and decided to take the easy way out.

 

[big_slacker]

This debate was kinda done to death on the original thread and I'm not looking to rehash it all, so here is the summary:

The meltdown had already snowballed and was in full effect when we made the decision to foreclose.

The meltdown was caused directly by the banks greedily handing out loans to people they shouldn't have, and then re-selling or using them to back their own borrowing. Their greed bit them and I'm fine with that. But it also bit folks like user name and us, who got loans we could afford that don't adjust.

I hardly got off scott free. We burned our downpayment, all that amortized interest and years of extra payments to principal. Not to mentioned wrecking our credit rating and affecting my ability to get clearance which limits my career somewhat.

The bank didn't get completely stiffed either. They got all those years of interest, extra payments, the money they made off there borrowing backed by the loan, writing off the loss AND getting their house back.

The stock market losses had already happened by the time we made our "late in the game" call, you can't blame me for your 401k losing value. Mine did too BTW, although I put it in bonds before it got totally wrecked.

Finally, I'm not bragging or thumbing my nose at anyone. I'm celebrating the fact that we managed to get out of bad situation as well as we did. And that life is not only going on but getting better. I refuse to hang my head for making a mistake and fixing it the best way I knew how.

PS blur- The audi is used, I paid 16k for it.

 

[PCHbreeze]

congrats on Tahoe...was there a week ago and I'd love to move there.