Official Upside Down on My Mortgage Thread

**pGekko** · 06-01-2010, 10:34 AM

I bought my place 4 years ago (foreclosure). This is a thread to discuss bailouts and other strategies to get out of this mess ... or just to vent.

**Lee Dog** · 06-01-2010, 10:37 AM

You're upside down on a foreclosure? Wow.

**pGekko** · 06-01-2010, 10:39 AM

Originally Posted by Lee Dog

You're upside down on a foreclosure? Wow.

Yep, and it's not even close. I moved from Chicago, waited out the market for a year (

), and bought a foreclosure that was $80K less than what I looked at a year before. I'm now probably upside down $30-40K right now.

**Lee Dog** · 06-01-2010, 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by gordongekko

Yep, and it's not even close. I moved from Chicago, waited out the market for a year (

), and bought a foreclosure that was $80K less than what I looked at a year before. I'm now probably upside down $30-40K right now.

Holy spit. That sucks dude.

**pGekko** · 06-01-2010, 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by Lee Dog

Holy spit. That sucks dude.

Future rental property apparently.

**The Black Hand** · 06-01-2010, 10:54 AM

Originally Posted by gordongekko

Yep, and it's not even close. I moved from Chicago, waited out the market for a year (

), and bought a foreclosure that was $80K less than what I looked at a year before. I'm now probably upside down $30-40K right now.

When we were moving back from the Crick, we put $5K on a house in a Pulte sub that my wife had to have for $247K. Intuition told me it was a bad idea. It was almost finished when we came down to look at the house on a Saturday. I told her we should ride over to a new sub down the street because on my way home from work one day I thought I saw them breaking ground and wanted to check out what they had. Months prior, I had her look at that company's website. My wife said the 2 dimentional drawings were ugly and she didn't want to live there. Fine. We proceed with the Pulte house. We got over to this other sub. These houses are 10X better and all at least 500 sq ft larger than the Pulte houses. She says she wants to stop into the office "just to see" what the houses are selling for. The hot chick in the office says they have a deal going and one spec home that was available now was $255. I wanted to kick her ass. Now I have to figure out a way dump the Pulte house. I ended up throwing away the $5K deposit to walk away from the deal. We ended up with a different house in this new sub in a better lot for about $15K more but on top of eventually losing all my equity, I also lost $5K on a house I never moved into.

They wanted $247K for that Pulte house. I would be shocked if that thing was worth more than $100-$105K. I would be upside down almost $150K (maybe more) if we would have moved into that house. I probably would have just thrown myself into oncoming traffic.

I have another story to post after lunch. (not as descriptive)

**SportsFromA2** · 06-01-2010, 10:58 AM

Originally Posted by Justin

When we were moving back from the Crick, we put $5K on a house in a Pulte sub that my wife had to have for $247K. Intuition told me it was a bad idea. It was almost finished when we came down to look at the house on a Saturday. I told her we should ride over to a new sub down the street because on my way home from work one day I thought I saw them breaking ground and wanted to check out what they had. Months prior, I had her look at that company's website. My wife said the 2 dimentional drawings were ugly and she didn't want to live there. Fine. We proceed with the Pulte house. We got over to this other sub. These houses are 10X better and all at least 500 sq ft larger than the Pulte houses. She says she wants to stop into the office "just to see" what the houses are selling for. The hot chick in the office says they have a deal going and one spec home that was available now was $255. I wanted to kick her ass. Now I have to figure out a way dump the Pulte house. I ended up throwing away the $5K deposit to walk away from the deal. We ended up with a different house in this new sub in a better lot for about $15K more but on top of eventually losing all my equity, I also lost $5K on a house I never moved into.

They wanted $247K for that Pulte house. I would be shocked if that thing was worth more than $100-$105K. I would be upside down almost $150K (maybe more) if we would have moved into that house. I probably would have just thrown myself into oncoming traffic.

I have another story to post after lunch. (not as descriptive)

wait so how much are you upside-down on your current house?

**Preacher_Boy** · 06-01-2010, 10:59 AM

Why the hell does an Official thread of Justin's stories not exist?

**The Black Hand** · 06-01-2010, 11:33 AM

Originally Posted by SportsFromA2

wait so how much are you upside-down on your current house?

My current house cost $270K. We took the money we made on the house in Redford, the first house in Ypsi Twp and the house in the Crick and put all of that on the house the house we now have in Ypsi Twp. Another thing to note is the first three moves were fully paid company relocations. We had not realtor fees, closing costs or anything. We took all of the money we made and put it directly into the next house. It was a nice deal. It cost $270K. We put down $55K to avoid paying PMI. Now I think the actual loan amount is now under $210 after paying down the principle. It recently appraised somewhere around $190K.

What I was saying is if we had gone through and bought that Pulte house for $247K, I seriously doubt that thing will appraise for more that $105K. There are foreclosures in our sub with more sq ftg in a smaller neighborhood in a more convenient location that have been listed for $135K and $150K. That Greene Farms Pulte sub is massive and they only have 3 or 4 different models of homes in that sub. You could literally have 15 of the exact same style of house for sale at the same time.

**The Black Hand** · 06-01-2010, 12:49 PM

Originally Posted by Justin

I have another story to post after lunch. (not as descriptive)

So before we moved from the Crick to Ypsi Twp, we looked at the area where we lived before we moved to the Crick. Augusta Twp is just south of Ypsi Twp (JDC Country). Five years ago, Augusta had the lowest property taxes in SE Michigan. Instead of these homebuilders buying in Augusta and selling for prices comparable to other houses in the area, these sh*tbirds wanted to gouge the consumer and offer houses that started probably around $50K higher than they should have. They figured you would be willing to pay more for the house and make up the money on the backend because the taxes were lower. The company that built the sub we lived in back in '03 before we moved west, had a sub under construction in Augusta. They had a bunch of little extra charges on everything you could thing of. For instance in the other sub they built, they charged one fee for cabinets. It included all cabinets in the house. In this new sub, they had a separate cost for cabinets in the kitchen and the bathrooms. I guess they would just make you go with pedestal sinks in all of the bathrooms if you didn't pay for the vanity. These houses were pretty good size. They were just under 3,000 sq ft for most of the models. After I priced it out with everything I wanted, that house was going to cost $290K. That was more than I could spend and my wife wasn't having it. That house would have been sweet if I could have pulled that off.

Looking back on it, I would think that house would still have to appraise above $200K. If we actually paid it, I would have to think the appraised value would be closer to our loan amount than we currently are and be one step closer to being able to sell the house when you also account for the lower taxes. I don't know that for sure.

Like I said, because they decided to gouge, they got caught holding the bag. Hometowne owned the sub. They were still under construction trying to sell $300K new houses just as the market was going to hell. They ended up going out of business and selling the sub to Hunter Pasture. Every now and then I ride down there to see what is going on. The last time I was there, that sub was still 75% empty. They started building it at least 5 yrs ago.

Another quick story. We looked at a sub down the street from the one above, also in Augusta. The prices were about the same but not quite as nice inside. The sub was bordered by train tracks on one side and all of the lots were minimum 1/2 acre. So we're inside one of the houses with Fadel the salesman and all of a sudden this train comes rolling down the tracks and the engineer is just beating the hell out of that horn in basically what will be my backyard if I were to buy that place. Fadel says "he's blowing the horn more than usual". **** you Fadel. I'm not living in this neighborhood. Last time I went down there, that sub wasn't full either. I don't know why I still remember that guys name.

**pGekko** · 06-01-2010, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Justin

So before we moved from the Crick to Ypsi Twp, we looked at the area where we lived before we moved to the Crick. Augusta Twp is just south of Ypsi Twp (JDC Country). Five years ago, Augusta had the lowest property taxes in SE Michigan. Instead of these homebuilders buying in Augusta and selling for prices comparable to other houses in the area, these sh*tbirds wanted to gouge the consumer and offer houses that started probably around $50K higher than they should have. They figured you would be willing to pay more for the house and make up the money on the backend because the taxes were lower. The company that built the sub we lived in back in '03 before we moved west, had a sub under construction in Augusta. They had a bunch of little extra charges on everything you could thing of. For instance in the other sub they built, they charged one fee for cabinets. It included all cabinets in the house. In this new sub, they had a separate cost for cabinets in the kitchen and the bathrooms. I guess they would just make you go with pedestal sinks in all of the bathrooms if you didn't pay for the vanity. These houses were pretty good size. They were just under 3,000 sq ft for most of the models. After I priced it out with everything I wanted, that house was going to cost $290K. That was more than I could spend and my wife wasn't having it. That house would have been sweet if I could have pulled that off.

Looking back on it, I would think that house would still have to appraise above $200K. If we actually paid it, I would have to think the appraised value would be closer to our loan amount than we currently are and be one step closer to being able to sell the house when you also account for the lower taxes. I don't know that for sure.

Like I said, because they decided to gouge, they got caught holding the bag. Hometowne owned the sub. They were still under construction trying to sell $300K new houses just as the market was going to hell. They ended up going out of business and selling the sub to Hunter Pasture. Every now and then I ride down there to see what is going on. The last time I was there, that sub was still 75% empty. They started building it at least 5 yrs ago.

Another quick story. We looked at a sub down the street from the one above, also in Augusta. The prices were about the same but not quite as nice inside. The sub was bordered by train tracks on one side and all of the lots were minimum 1/2 acre. So we're inside one of the houses with Fadel the salesman and all of a sudden this train comes rolling down the tracks and the engineer is just beating the hell out of that horn in basically what will be my backyard if I were to buy that place. Fadel says "he's blowing the horn more than usual". **** you Fadel. I'm not living in this neighborhood. Last time I went down there, that sub wasn't full either. I don't know why I still remember that guys name.

I believe you are missing a fat lady here.