How come many of us end up with underwater houses?
If you are like many homeowners today, you are overwhelmed by what the American dream is supposed to be: home ownership. We have this vision of what it’s supposed to be: nice house, white fence, a couple of kids, a dog in the backyard, summer barbecues, family time, and so much more.
We found a house and fell in love with it. Then we find a mortgage broker who offers us an incredible deal: zero or low down payment or low fixed payments for two years or something like that. We buy the house, we move and everything is fine with the world.
Soon, our two-year low monthly payment restarts, the payment increases, then it resets again, and the payment continues to increase. Now the stress of making our mortgage payment is all we think about and become disillusioned with our American dream:
The dream continues to crumble when you try to sell your home to free yourself from payments only to find that property values have fallen across the country and you now owe more than your home is worth. Sadly, there are hundreds of thousands of homes on the market that are not selling because people, like you, owe more than your home is worth.
If you have the time and money, you can wait for the market and sell your property when values rise again. If you are like most Americans, you don’t have time to wait. You want to be relieved of stress today.
Many of us could be other types of homeowners: real estate investors disillusioned by the dream of getting rich by buying and selling real estate. There are so many late-night TV shows that they make real estate investing look a breeze. You bought a property in the hopes of making some money from it, and now it is costing you more than you can afford, every month.
The good news is that there are many solutions available that most people don’t know exist. Did you know that you can negotiate with your bank to accept less than what you currently owe as a full payment? Did you know that there are government programs that will allow you to rent your home for three times the current market rents? No matter where you are in your property situation, there is a solution for you.