Hello,

I'm hoping someone can offer me some advice on my financial situation. My wife lost her job over a year ago, and attempts to find another job over the course of the following 6-8 months proved to be fruitless. Financially we were doing well and the only debt we had was our fixed 30-yr mortgage. We decided we needed to downsize our house/mortgage and put the home on the market last October. We've had plenty of shoppers, but only one very low offer, which was about $10K below what we owe.

Since putting the home on the market, we've liquidated assets, cut back on expenses, and have taken out a cash advance on our credit card to buy us some time until the home hopefully sells. We had it priced $30-40K below the competition for a long time, which i believe is why we got the traffic we did, however recent comparisons now show us $10-30 above the competition. Currently, we have the home priced about $15K more than what we owe.

When we found out about the affordable home program, we applied to our bank, and about two weeks ago, they offered us a forebearance agreement for four months. We thought we were applying for the loan modification, but after talking with them today, we do not qualify based on our monthly income deficit. We're behind about 1,100 per month and the lender wants us to be $150 behind to qualify for the modification. I thought that was a bit ludicrous, but given my very basic understanding of the situation, i may be incorrect in my thinking.

That being said, we have about six months of savings before we're all tapped out. I don't have much hope for my wife getting employed, and selling doesn't seem to be looking very good either. I'm wondering if we should just stop paying now and hold onto the cash that we do have. We have very good credit right now, and we were hoping the loan modification would keep it that way, but it doesn't seem like that is going to happen.

Any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

Florida.

We haven't really considered a short sale, but i wouldn't rule it out. We've had quite a bit of traffic in showing the house, but no offers. We've been consistently priced 30-40K lower than comparable properties, so i don't think price is the issue. We have 3 acres and i think, from what i've noticed folks discussing, is that a lot of our visitors have had a poorly preconceived idea of just how large 3 acres is.