Bucyn

The Junk hauler just left with the rest of his crap. OMG, the house feels so CLEAN!

We still have to pick up stray bits in the yard and cut and weedwhack, but the worst of it is gone.

Over the last couple years I'd grown to hate this house, it was a shabby falling down, messy money pit, filled with negativity and tons of his low class, hoarded clutter crap, and his creepy, criminal kid, his alcoholism, and his mommy boy issues. I'd get headaches on the way home from work.

Last summer we went up to Orlando to look at condos for my son who was going to go there to college. I remember thinking, OMG, I'd love to live here...or here....or here. I put in a transfer to Orlando, but the money and the job promotions are here in Miami. I hope to get two major ones in the next 13 months.

So I've been looking at places here. There's a wonderful condo complex in a neighborhood about a quarter mile from here called Embassy Lakes. They are townhouses, abt 1700 sqft, with a garage, a large living room, a nice size dining room, 2.5 baths, 3 bedrooms, updated everything, high ceilings, low HOA fee (because most of the houses around here are in the $400,000-700,000 range and they carry the costs). A pool, gym community house. A lot people I work for plus my kids' friends live here. And with my VA loan, I can afford it. I just assumed this is where I was going to move after the divorce and foreclosure and I was very happy at the thought. Got a floor plan and a computer program to lay out my furniture and choose how to paint and fix it up. It was fun.

Then my foreclosure lawyer said, I was in a perfect situation to modify under the Obama program. For the same monthly payment. Sigh....hmmm, a old house with dinky, nasty out dated bathrooms (think plastic blue marble), with windows falling out, a broken air conditioner, a roof that could go any time, oceans of outdated tile on the first floor, half laid wood flooring on the second. Ugh. But perhaps in the long run slightly more profitable…if the roof doesn’t go and I stay long enough and want to deal with the pool and lawn.

So I figured I’d try to modify and if it didn’t go through, I’d enjoy my townhouse. Friday I got notice from XAH’s lawyer that XAH hadn’t paid his legal bill and Shark was going to put a lien on the house. Fine with me, the more encumbered the house is, the less value it has to the bank, and the more likely I am to get my price in the renegotiation. The lien can be stripped during the remodification (per my bankruptcy foreclosure team), and if for some reason it can’t, I’ll let the house go into foreclosure, then bankrupt myself and move on (I'll have to pay 11% interest on the VA loan for 2 years, but will be able to afford it).

XAH will have to go bankrupt or pick up the deficiency in the mortgage, the second mortgage debt and his lawyer’s debt again, abt $100K worth. His lawyer is charging him 18% interest too for past due amounts. And if it’s his own delinquency in paying his attorney that forced the house into foreclosure rather than modification, he can’t complain.

The man thought he could just walk away and leave me holding the bag. He thought he was going to make me sorry. Didn't turn out that way at all.

Leaving an alkie can be wonderful. Even with liens, foreclosure, bankrutcy, nasty legal wranging. I knew those things were coming, and it made me hesitant to leave (that and my stepdau). But those things don't matter. I'm happy, my kids are happy. The other stuff will resolve.