Many Oklahoma City homeowners are struggling to meet their payments on their mortgage. You may be one of them and the temptation is to borrow more until things turn around. Trouble is in most cases that change may be years away if the unemployment rate stays at the 6.9% level here, and demand is down and spending along with it. Many people in Oklahoma City depend on you buying a car, or clothes, or recreation equipment. Governments depend on it too becuase without your spending tax revenues to not flow in and services get cut. This is our world for the near future. Our standard statement to Oklahoma City area homeowners in distress is, "you can't eat your house". So before you use up all your credit card balances, or try to borrow money from a bank of relatives consider waht constitutes a hardship for doing a short sale on your home that right now you cannot afford and is eating you alive financially and emotionally.
Loss of Income. Many families depend on two full time jobs so when one is lost or one or both take a pay cut, this is the most common hardship and we have never had one truned down by a lender.
Medical Expenses. We don't plan on getting seriously ill but it happens. Personally I had cancer and had two years of expenses that were over and above my health insurance. It has an impact on your savings if you have them, and diminishes your ability to work and often your spouse too as they become your caretaker.
Divorce. You bought a home together and then you decide you can't be together anymore. One moves out, expenses are greatter due to a house payment and a rent payment. When two live more expensively apart rather than together, this is a hardship too.
Relocation. You have to move or your company will fire you, or you have lost your job and the only job available is in another state. You cannot be expected to pay for your existing home and then have to move where you have to pay for another.
In all of these cases I have worked an Oklahoma City short sale recently, or currently am working one. Alos remember that some types of savings are protected. If you are close to retirement lenders don't turn you down if you are not willing to exhaust your retirement savings as an example. What lenders do look carefully at is do you just want to walk away becasue the value of your home has gone down. In Oklahoma City real estate this does not happen often because our values have not plummeted like bubble states. However we have seen a loss of some values and many people paid very little down with FHA or with conventional 100% financing. Do not beat yourself up by saying I should have known better. This is not about guilt, or dwelling on the past. This is about not seeing your credit rating go down further or have your family suffer because of pride. If you are an Oklahoma City homeowner and you want to avoid foreclosure, let us do a confidential consultation with you to give you your options. We are here to help.
Joe Pryor & Charlene Humphreys, Distressed Property experts
joe@joepryor.com
chumphreys2@cox.net