My mother in law has been battling to keep her home (or at least come out of it with a small amount of money to roll into another home) for almost 2 years now. She's been laid off 3 times in that time frame, and has managed to keep current on her payments. She has had to take a large pay cut in order to obtain a position at all, and has been dipping into her retirement funds (she's over 60) to do so. She's been irresponsible with her money in the past and is definitely trying to learn from her mistakes with this.
She's had the home on the market for the past 6 months, but has been seeing little traffic through it. Her Realtor, who we definitely trust as there is a longstanding business relationship, advised her yesterday that a home in her neighborhood (one that is definitely considered a comp) just dropped their price to a level that would do nothing more than pay off my mother in law's mortgage, were she able to get that price. So basically she is now in a position where her Realtor is advising her that her best option is a short sale as she is "chasing a down market". I was afraid that it would come to this, but was hoping it wouldn't happen. Now that it has, I'm not sure what her best first steps to get this going in a timely manner with a minimal impact on her credit will be. Neither my DH & I, nor DH's brother are in a position to assist her financially, though we are completely behind her decisions on this and are willing to provide whatever non-financial support we possibly can. I am hoping someone who has been in a similar situation would be willing to share what they did, what they would do differently if they could go back and why.
thanks in advance for sharing.
