Five Things You Can Do To Keep Your House

I'm amazed at how many people I talk to who are in the process of losing their homes and yet they have a good income. Somehow they missed a payment and slid into two thirty day late or worse they go into three late payments and now they cannot come up with the money. I know a  man who lost his home and still does not understand how people can afford to pay their mortgage. And he had a good income! But here we go. Five Ways to keep your home.

1. Pay your mortgage first. Always. Simple right. Do you know how many people pay credit cards first or medical bills? And then they don't have the money for their mortgage. The very first thing you do is pay your mortgage above all else. Then whatever is left over you pay your utilities. Keep the lights on and the home heated. Then food. Then credit cards. Then medical.

2.If you are late then negotiate with the bank right away. Pay late but pay. Even if you are month behind. They cannot initiate foreclosure if you send in your payment.

3.Go for a  loan modification. If you are late then you are a perfect candidate. In fact they wont consider you for a loan mod unless you are late. If you get it they will reset your mortgage. Keep paying during the loan mod even if they tell you not too. What happens is people don't pay and then they don't get it and owe like ten grand.

4. If you go into foreclosure go to court and enter the case. You don't need a lawyer. You pay  fifty dollars and you enter your side of the case. They will continue it. Go back and they will continue it. Go back and they will continue it. This can go on for years. I know a woman who asked for her deed and they couldn't produce it. She has been in her home for five years since the foreclosure began.

5. Don't leave your home. I know more people who leave their home after the first court appearance notice. Don't do it. Illinois is running years behind in their foreclosure process and your loan mod could come through at any time. But the bottom line is you can probably stay in your home for years beyond the initial filing of foreclosure.

There. Five things to keep your home. Good luck.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Fort Apache: Still Can't Move

They say the housing market is getting better but most people still cant move. Unless you want to walk out of your home and start over. A lot of people are doing that. Well some. But you have to be ok with taking nothing with you and maybe wrecking your credit. But the bottom line is the normal process of taking some money with you for your next house has been obliterated. Not only was lending destroyed in the Great Recession but Real Estate has pretty much ceased to function. At least for people who now own

Even if you can get a little out of your house then you have to find a house where the new numbers ill work. The fact of the matter is most people are so upside down in their homes they cannot move. In this way people are stranded. There is no mobility anymore in the upward mobility of Americans. We always prided ourselves on being able to move on if things don't work out. Now we have to just hunker down. The problem is we have been hunkering down for five years.

And they say real estate is up. But for who? First time home buyers. They can come at it fresh with no loss on their current home. Lets face it....it is freaky to walk away from hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equity. Poof. Gone. Intellectually you know it. Of course the real problem is bad credit. A lot of people cant qualify for a new home or they don't have the income anymore. Fort Apache. That is where we are now.

We have to just hide out in our fort until....

Rocket Man....the novel of the Upside Down Generation

The New American Dream: Downsizing

It is the first thing off someones lips who is selling their home now. I'm downsizing. Used to be people whose kids had gone off to college would downsize, now everyone is doing it. Apologies to all those still in search of the perfect McMansion, but everyone I bump into including myself talks about one thing: getting into something smaller with less taxes and less mortgage. It has become the new American Dream.

In my last novel, Rocket Man, the main character finally  gets his dream and is able to short sale his house away and go back toward the city and live in a bungalow. This is the polar opposite of the steady march of America which probably began with the first Puritans who decided a bigger log cabin was better and from then on the implied assumption was that materialism was next to Godliness and a big house put you into the Big Mans Favor.

Gatsby, right? Jay Gatsby's pride and joy, his magnet for Daisy was his home. A mansion he resurrected on the Long Island sound to show the world he had made it. The American Dream was at its zenith during the twenties and there was nothing more American than a bigger home. Bigger does not only belong to Texas, it is wrapped up in the swagger of American prowess. Let the Europeans live in their bungalows and row houses...we live in Giant Homes. We live in mansions.

But then of course that all came crashing down much like the Hindenburg with all the concomitant horror. Suddenly the big house no longer represented prosperity or at least upward mobility, now it had become an albatross around our neck...a prison of debt and sinking good fortune. Our homes could literally make us homeless now with the specter of upside down mortgages and foreclosure.

So the race is on to downsize. Who knows where it will end, but like Dale Hammer says at the end of Rocket Man  and is sitting in the small yard of his new home: I was finally where I was meant to be.

Lucky him.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man


http://www.bi/

The old cars of the middle class

Old cars are making a come back. Or maybe it's just because I drive old cars. Used to have really nice cars with really nice payments. Five hundred. Four hundred. Big thirty thousand dollar monsters that broke down pretty quickly just the same. Amazing how that new car smell went away so quickly. I guess there is a spray out there you can get so you can keep it going. And those first dings. Rough man. And then that first time you don't get by the wash and your thirty five thousand dollar ripoff looks old.

That sucks.

So then you get rid of it or you pay it off and it becomes your old car. Ten years old with a one hundred and fifty thousand miles. You quit washing it years ago.  You just keep it going. You don't have any payments and you don't want any. Now you have two old cars and the air goes out or a window doesn't close or a door doesn't open and the upholstery smells like a junkyard with that sun baked smell of old clothes in a trunk. And the floor is covered in leaves and dirt and old junk food wrappers.

But it still runs.

And so you cruise around with your loud muffler and then some dude pulls up next to you in a Beamer. You look over and you feel the pang. Man I want that car. I want to get into a car that smells good and looks good and I want that new feeling man. Because if your car is new then you are new. You just feel better about everything. And that lasts about... a month. And then you are staring down those payments and you start thinking about the fact you are paying up to five hundred bucks a month just to get from point A to point B.

No thanks.

And so the Beamer dude pulls ahead and you get your jalopy up to speed. Throw in a CD of old songs you dig. And look for a McDonald's. Life aint so bad.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man...losing a house should not be this funny