Foreclosure Rocks!

So it finally happened. After more than a year of not making a single mortgage payment for our condo, my wife, Jana, and I foreclosed. Sure, I tried saving it at first. When selling the condo straight out didn’t work I opted for a short sale, when the short sale didn’t work I tried for a deed in lieu, and when that failed I tried burning it to the ground, eventually… I just let it run its course. I know what you’re thinking, “That’s retarded, why would anyone want a foreclosure.” Let me explain, at the time my wife and I were newlyweds. We were more or less convinced to purchase the condo by our parents. Apparently, it’s the next logical step after marriage — get married, buy a home, settle down, have kids, focus on your career and waste away in suburbia. It’s funny how you have these grand plans as a new couple — sailing around the world, living in a hut in Costa Rica, joining the Peace Corps. Let me tell you, purchasing a house will end those dreams REAL quick.

Jana and I bought the condo at the height of real estate costs, I’m talking literally months before the crash. This was about 3 and a half years ago. With the help of our parents, and practically selling everything I owned (including my Gameboy DS), we purchased the 2 bedroom condo for $130,000. We literally had 1 day to “pick” our home. So, we drove around Orlando on a Saturday afternoon with our family, looking for a place to buy. Jana and I looked at 3 condos, most of which were in the ghetto. We settled on the one we thought was “least” in the ghetto. Turns out we were wrong. The previous residents sawed holes in the walls to “mount” their big ass speakers. I wish I could describe how awful it looked. Lucky for us, that was the least of our troubles.

After a few months of living there we had several issues. Our neighbors were literally an abusive single mother on one side, and a drug dealer on the other. Throughout the day we heard the mother screaming at her kids and throwing stuff against the walls, we prayed it wasn’t the kids themselves. During the night our condo was often frequented by addicts who had our condo mixed up with the drug dealer next door. I didn’t like Jana walking around the neighborhood at night at all. There were often fights in the parking lot, and I was consistently approached by crack heads wanting to borrow my phone and scream at their baby’s mama for an hour wasting my minutes. We were living the dream!

Six months passed and enough was enough. We couldn’t handle living in that hell hole any longer. It was time to sell. Unfortunately for us, the Orlando real estate market was crashing harder than the coke fiends next door. We started out trying to make a little bit of profit. Which is the whole freaking idea of purchasing a home rather than renting in the first place! I’m just a little bitter. With no bites, we kept dropping the price. Eventually, we just wanted to break even, but that wasn’t working out so hot either. Finally, we purchased one-way tickets to Hawaii 6 months in advance and gave ourselves an ultimatum. Hopefully we sell within 6 months, if not, “Oh well, we tried.”

For those months we refused to purchase anything for the condo. Instead, we focused on getting rid of stuff. Selling furniture on craigslist, donating extra clothes to the homeless, dropping stuff off at Goodwill, and just throwing away excess goods. By the end of the 6 months, our condo was stripped down to the bone. As it turned out, we had an interested buyer. The buyer was willing to purchase our condo for about 5 thousand less than what we owed. We figured we would eat the 5 grand and count our losses. We were lucky to have anyone interested at this point. The buyer signed the contract and we packed our car with luggage. It was a week before the inspection and Central Florida received a heavy dose of severe thunderstorms and flooding. So much rain that a portion of our ceiling caved in. It was damage due to leakage from the exterior, the condo associations problem, not ours. We attempted to have it repaired by the Home Owners Association as quickly as possible. After all, that was what we paid them $300 a month for. They were extremely uncooperative. One thing led to another, the inspection failed, and our buyer backed out. Oh happy day. By this time we were already traveling across the country before flying out to Hawaii from California. I think we were actually on the road in Oklahoma at the time. We were presented with 2 options; drive back to an empty condo in the ghetto of Orlando, or continue our adventure to Hawaii. I like to think we chose the better option.

It turns out the condos in our community are currently selling for $40,000. That’s $90,000 less than what we paid. We could buy 3 of those condos now for less than the price of what we paid for one. Had we sold our condo, we would still owe more than double the amount of the selling price. Foreclosure was by far, the best option. I gladly accept 7 years of bad credit over paying $90,000 on a condo I don’t even own. I guess some lessons you learn the hard way. Mine and Jana’s venture in to the world of real estate and purchasing a home was one of those lessons. Next time, we will shop for a house a little longer than 1 afternoon, and we’ll really make sure it’s a wise decision and a great location. We don’t plan on making the same mistake twice.

We continued making payments on the condo for our first few months in Hawaii, until tax season rolled around. Since Jana and I had both worked contract jobs the previous year we owed Uncle Sam a lot of money, and our soul. We stopped paying our mortgage to afford taxes. Unfortunately we had to continue paying the monthly (and worthless) $300 HOA fee. After more than a year of no payments our condo finally foreclosed last month. It was truly a happy day. In fact, it rocked!