There is no question that the best part of this gig is all the wonderful people I get to correspond with. One of my correspondents, RM, has sent me several emails over the past couple of days updating her situation- she just found out that the home she is renting is being foreclosed on. With her permission, I am sharing the story with Doomers. Following are excerpts from her emails the past couple of days:
Jan 13
Hi Twist,
I wanted to tell you what is going on with us. My husband and I are renting our home in Utah . That’s why I’ve been trying to follow the housing blogs for a couple of years now. We refuse to buy a house with all this mess going on. We sold our beach house in Florida in 2002 and have been renters ever since.
Anyway, our rental is being foreclosed on because the elderly former owners got scammed by a flipper and ended up getting the house back after he failed to pay the mortgage payments. I guess they got talked in to co-signing his loan (they didn’t know the dude). They are in a nursing home that requires them to not have any income. The property manager, Coldwell Banker, therefore, can’t send them our rent payments because they won’t accept them. If they do, they’ll be kicked out of the nursing home for having too much income.
So, the first mortgage is with WAMU. The second is with Countrywide. The house is being auctioned on 5 February and we just found out this week. This house doesn’t show up on WAMU or Countrywide’s bank-owned sites because I suppose it’s not officially theirs until it doesn’t sell at auction. On Foreclosurestogo.com, it shows up under Pre-Foreclosure only.
I watch the Countrywide count and see how they have over 15,000 bank-owned homes and ours isn’t on there (but it soon will be on WAMU’s, I assume).
I guess I’m finally coming to the conclusion that the tsunami of soon-to-be-foreclosed-on houses is WAY bigger than anyone can imagine. If ours is flying under the radar, how many others are too.
We’re not too stressed but I am having a bottle (ooops, I mean, glass) of wine for dinner tonight : )
RM
