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For no particular reason, I've just started feeling freaked out about my home mortgage situation. It just really struck me suddenly that yes, my "second mortgage" really is a home-equity loan, and as a loan it really does have a fixed time period in which to be repaid, which is to say by the fifth anniversary of signing the loan, which is coming up in two months. So they really do expect me to repay that significant chunk of money within the next two months.
Well actually I suppose they don't expect me to repay it as such, since when this was set up during my initial purchase I was repeatedly assured that I would of course refinance the mortgage before the five-year period ended, so the home equity portion would just get rolled back into a single mortgage. I can't remember what the specific reasoning was in the first place for doing it this way, except that I was told it was the only way I'd be able to get the mortgage approved. Well, my agent was good enough to check in a couple times, during my third and fourth year of "ownership", to see how things were going and talk a bit about refinancing; both times he contacted some advisor who said it wasn't a good time because the rates hadn't changed much, so at best I wouldn't see much difference in what I was paying.
Here I am now nearly at the end of five years, with a refinancing effort not even started. I don't have a full-time job and I don't have regular reliable income to show from my freelancing work; instead, I have seriously mounting credit card debt from covering my everyday expenses while keeping my mortgage and bills paid over the past three years. I already talked to my current mortgage holder last year about payment assistance, and went through their process of providing my financial details, only to have them come back and state very simply "you do not meet our investor profile," which I understand to mean "we don't believe you'll ever be able to pay us." Their offer instead was to do a short sale of my place, which would let me get out of the mortgage without harming my credit rating. (And yes, they supposedly were taking into account the federal mortgage adjustment assistance program.)
I like my home very much—despite the current external wall problem we're dealing with, that's making it that much harder to afford to stay here—it's a good roomy space in a good location. I don't want to move elsewhere, I don't want to go back to living in an apartment instead of a place I can consider my own, and again given my still precarious financial situation, I don't want to have to move to some smaller and remotely located apartment which is likely what will be affordable. But after spending all this time basically waiting for my situation to improve, I may have run out of any time and ability to do anything other than bail out with a short sale and quick move.
Well actually I suppose they don't expect me to repay it as such, since when this was set up during my initial purchase I was repeatedly assured that I would of course refinance the mortgage before the five-year period ended, so the home equity portion would just get rolled back into a single mortgage. I can't remember what the specific reasoning was in the first place for doing it this way, except that I was told it was the only way I'd be able to get the mortgage approved. Well, my agent was good enough to check in a couple times, during my third and fourth year of "ownership", to see how things were going and talk a bit about refinancing; both times he contacted some advisor who said it wasn't a good time because the rates hadn't changed much, so at best I wouldn't see much difference in what I was paying.
Here I am now nearly at the end of five years, with a refinancing effort not even started. I don't have a full-time job and I don't have regular reliable income to show from my freelancing work; instead, I have seriously mounting credit card debt from covering my everyday expenses while keeping my mortgage and bills paid over the past three years. I already talked to my current mortgage holder last year about payment assistance, and went through their process of providing my financial details, only to have them come back and state very simply "you do not meet our investor profile," which I understand to mean "we don't believe you'll ever be able to pay us." Their offer instead was to do a short sale of my place, which would let me get out of the mortgage without harming my credit rating. (And yes, they supposedly were taking into account the federal mortgage adjustment assistance program.)
I like my home very much—despite the current external wall problem we're dealing with, that's making it that much harder to afford to stay here—it's a good roomy space in a good location. I don't want to move elsewhere, I don't want to go back to living in an apartment instead of a place I can consider my own, and again given my still precarious financial situation, I don't want to have to move to some smaller and remotely located apartment which is likely what will be affordable. But after spending all this time basically waiting for my situation to improve, I may have run out of any time and ability to do anything other than bail out with a short sale and quick move.
