I'm not sure if this is better suited for here or r/legaladvice, but I'm more interested in what will happen to my credit and such than what laws are involved. So I'm posting here. This is long so TL;dr at the bottom.
About 8 years ago I bought a house for $122K with 0 down on a fixed 33 year loan through a special program where being low income meant I didn't have to put anything down but also wasn't penalized for doing such a thing(so no mortgage insurance, etc).
I was a single mom making a $400/w salary in an area where it seems pretty much everyone is on government assistance for food and housing. I was no different. It seemed like a good idea, I was very young; and my child was needing to start school and our current district was terrifying, we lived in a really bad area. I wanted to be in a good district and the house payment was surprisingly less than rent payment for the district, by a little.
The house is a one story on a slab and after living in it a year I realized it was overpriced. Workmanship was crap and I learned everyone in the neighborhood had to put in thousands extra to fix what the builders had done, these were new construction. The builders filed bankruptcy halfway through the subdivision and moved out of state.
Then the house flooded, twice. I found out the house had flooded at least 2 times before I bought it. I discussed it with a lawyer and we are a "buyer beware" state, so he said that I was SOL.
Spent money I didn't have to get a professional company come out and determine the issues and fix them, but it turns out they are not fixable in the current situation. My house is basically sitting in a retaining pond that shouldn't exist.
The company I hired did what they could to basically dig trenches in my yard to help keep the water from getting in the house, but the garage still floods on a semi-regular basis, my septic tank constantly fills with rain water because it is right in the lowest area, and we've been mostly in a drought for the past 3 years, so I have no idea if the work will actually save us when the real rains come.
So we've been living as if water could come in at any moment. We keep everything up on blocks, there is no flooring, just rugs on concrete that can be hung to dry. Everything is attached to the walls to keep it high and if it rains we run around the house making sure nothing is on the floor. If it is a heavy rain we turn off the power breaker and go to my mom's house until it passes. We just pray on the drive home we don't return to a mess.
It's a terrible way to live. I've also had another child and have serious health issues and just feel like I'm drowning in the constant unease.
Current payoff is $110K. I could maybe see someone buying it for $60-70K and trying to do something with it. A lot of the houses in the neighborhood are foreclosures and are being listed at $90K, none of them have the problems mine do. So if someone would actually buy this place, I'd still have a lot of debt.
My mom keeps telling me I should just walk away from it, but I can't imagine what that would do to us financially and to my credit. I could really use some help understanding.
TL;dr still owe $110K on a $122K house that flooded twice and is maybe worth half that. What would happen if I walked away?
Submitted May 26, 2017 at 02:37PM by throwaway589376 http://ift.tt/2r4OE11
