Which do you want to attempt first?

Thanks,Lo! Thumbs up from me!

So you want to buy a house at the low prices and sell the one you agreed to buy at a loss to the bank? Who are you? Do you all not get that WE are all paying for these horrible choices - the ones made by the "subprime" world, Wall Street??? And now we would be paying for yours too if you bail on your house and you criticize the people that made the mistakes that got us into this mess? Why are you any better?

I am reading the responses below and am appalled. So you choose to buy a house, you shopped for a good loan, you talked to a Realtor and asked appropriate questions about the market and listened to Alan Greenspan say there was no housing bubble. Then the market starting tanking and you think everyone else should have known this was coming??? Noone questioned it all when pricing were going up and your 401K was going up. We just bought more and more and more and thought it was our American dream. What difference does it make what your house is worth if you don't have to sell it? You have no responsibility to pay your debt back because your house is worth less than you paid/owe on it????? Hello, look in your garage at that car you own. That is ALL of us - me included, on all 4 of my houses. So let's all give our houses back to the bank? SERIOUSLY? So if your house had gone UP in value, would you have paid the bank MORE for it? Who said your house was guaranteed to go up in value?

People, just sit tight and pay your mortgage. There is historical data suggesting that it is not unusual to see Real estate go up and down in value over time. If you have to move, rent it out and rent another house or rent out a room. The market will likely rebound in time. And if you keep paying your mortgage the balance goes down. In the meantime, take some personal responsibilty here. What a crazy sense of entitlement we all have in America. If you lost your job, deliver pizza's/find any job you can even if it is beneath your standards. Maybe a stay at home spouse has to get a job, maybe you need a 2nd job, cancel cable, eat at home, buy generic, grow a garden, no vacations, carpool, sell your unused stuff, get rid of the SUV payment and buy an older used car in good shape, negotiate with your credit cards, not your HOME. Watch the Dave Ramsey show.

This isn't STUPIDITY, this is life. If you foreclose or do a short sale, it is unlikely you will be able to buy another house for about 3 years. Banks have caught on to the bright idea of buying and then letting the other house go, they are looking for this now. Your credit is ruined. All your other interest rates on your debt is likely to rise. You will be renting anyway. Then you will see the house you let go rebound in value and you will be kicking yourself. America - let's grow up and take personal responsibility. For all of you that are paying your mortgages, thank you. Because of you, we will get out of this mess sooner!

It allways boggles my mind when people respond that it's the buyers fault. The "buy and bail" comment makes no sense in most cases. I put 100K into my home and now I am short selling it. I could not afford it. I cleaned out my 401k and my daughters college fund trying to keep up with my payments. How can it be justified on the banks part that a loan be made when I hid nothing on my financials. I had to go through every detail of my finances in order to get approved. They were betting on things getting better and home prices going up they did not care whether my family and I were going to be left homeless. The banks put our country in this mess and now not only will I pay for it so will my kids. Dont blame this on Main Street buddy.

In 2005 my husband I bought a modest 3 bed/1 bath 1100 square foot house in the cheapest neighborhood in the area. We put 10% down and got a 6% fixed rate 30 year loan. Our neighborhood has been hit hard by foreclosures and now we are upside down on our mortgage and so our lender will not let us refinance at lower rates. Our house is worth about half of what we still owe on the mortgage. There was no way at the time we bought that we could have known that the prices were being driven up by the subprime lending practices. However, our lender, who is specifically in the business, should have been aware of this.

Why should we take the hit when we were acting responsibly? We did not cause the crisis. We bought what we could afford. But now we end up being the ones paying for other peoples' irresponsibility or greed. From a business perspective, it would totally make sense to buy and bail at this point.

We have no credit card debt, paid off student loans before buying a house, waited to start a family until we were financially stable. Our only other loans are our car loans.

This whole thing is rotten, and the responsible people are the ones footing the bill. Could someone please explain to me how staying in this house is not an act of extreme stupidity?

Many people are short sales on their homes in Florida, not because they do not want to own up to their obligations, but because banks will not refinance homes that are upside down in their mortgage. I f you bought a house in the last few years in Florida it has lost at least 25% of its value and most likely more. Many loan programs require a refinance in 3 to 5 years and this is not possible so its either short sale or foreclosure. There are a lot of people who got caught up in this situation that did not do anything wrong. It is unfair to just assume that people are not trying. Some people are in a situation where they are going to loose their home due to the above circumstances but before that happens they have good enough credit to buy a small home with the low prices of today. At least when the bank refuses to refinance them, they have a place to live. To much blame is being tossed around without facts and knowledge. We hear all the time about loan modifications, I know of several people who have been trying to do that. It is a joke, especially here where their is such a huge difference in the loan amount and the market value. Most of these people would prefer to stay in their home but they can't without a refi. This is not helping the market in any way and it will continue for the next 3 years until all of these types of loans come due.

Rafi.....newsflash.........
You are on a real estate site asking for information. You wil get real estate agents answering! Bashing the people because you don't like the answers doesn't seem terribly appropriate.
If you want legal advice from an attorney - call one and hire them.

I am just curious - if you can't afford to make payments on the home you are in - why do you want to buy another one? if you have money to make a new purchase - why not work out something with your current lender, and take care of your current obligation? I am sure those financial advisors (whose advice you are seeking ) will appreciate your good faith efforts.

Buying will be a challenge after going through a short sale. You really haven't mentioned whether or not you were delinquent. If you were, that will definitely make qualifying for a new home loan much harder. I believe that trying to stay in the house is better and I agree with the individual who recommended modification. This might be an opportunity for you to keep your home and avoid having to start over again. Check out the site.

Good Luck

Thumbs up to Jesse, great answer on this one!

Rafi,

Everyone is right although I think we can all play nice. However, if you want to stay in your current home and try to sell it on a short sale you may be able to do that, especially if you ARE experience financial difficulty meeting the payments. I know that some lenders are allowing people to purchase a new home within a year after selling their previous on a short sale. That situation is the most likely scenario.

If affordability is a problem, a loan modification might be another option. Have you talked to anyone about that yet? There is free government help for that. Here's a link: http://www.hopenow.com/

I do hope that everything works out for you and if there's anything else I can help with please let me know.

Have a good evening.

Danielle Sharp
Broker Assoc
Vadala Realty

Direct 239.471.2102
Cell 248.207.4445
sharphomes@yahoo.com

By the way,thumbs up toboth of you,James & Jesse for your honest,ethical answers!

There is no way you will be approved for a short sale without demonstrating hardship and buying another house will not be considered a hardship. you cannot do a short sale without lender approval and this will not be a go. "Buy& bail' when applied to foreclosures is considered mortgage fraud. Even if you were approved for a short sale,your credit score would take a 200-300 point hit. in most states the lender could sock you with a deficiency judgment and you would be required to come up with the difference in what you owe and the short sale price.

sure........ignore your responsibilities and add to the current mess we are in. When did it become acceptable for people to borrow money and then turn around and say "I am not going to pay you back"?

Essentially.......it is the same as stealing and should be dealt with more harshly than it is now.

If you have enough cash to buy the new house without a mortgage, then a short sale on your current house won't matter. Otherwise, you probably won't be able to, because you'll have difficulty qualifying for the new mortgage, and because buy-and-bail strategies are not tolerated.