I am currently 45 days behind on a mortgage from Indymac, I bought my home last year for $350k comps are running about $205k and I have an interest only loan. The neighborhood is terrible now swat team drug bust, kids tagging houses and multiple arrests, all at homes you can see from my front door. This home is barely a year old and the amount of equity lost isn't worth trying to keep it. I will most likely have to stay here and pay on a worthless home for a minimum of 5yrs (if we're lucky) before I can even break even. I am planning to walk away from this home. My question, is $150k+ worth salvaging a credit score for?

I live in Las Vegas if you haven't guessed. If anyone who has gone through a similar situation I would love to hear your feedback, even if you heven't any feedback would be helpful.

Thanks

If anyone has any info on the process Indymac uses, please let me know. How long? what to tell them etc

Devo, while I'm unfamiliar with the Indymac foreclosure process, I'm interested to see how it unfolds. Please keep updating this thread with information as things progress, and try as hard as you can to get a principle reduction if possible!

I wil keep up with it my original loan officer is going to reach me tomorrow. I wil let you know how it goes

The feedback I am gettng is Indymac is pretty slow because they went under and they are very willing to do loan mods. If I had to guess I would say 9 months. You asked yourself an excellent question that more and more home owners are going to be asking themselves in the near future. Is your credit worth 150k. I think you know the answer. More like $200k if you ad up the amount of money you are paying over rent on a monthly basis, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, ect.

I had an Indymac foreclosure. We were 30 days late, but had the house staged and on the market, we kept trying to talk to them about how we were trying to sell it, wanted to work something out with making payments until it could sell. They didn't care, wouldn't talk to us.
At 30 days late, they went to the house and changed all the locks and winterized the house (in May, in Arizona). We got there right when they were doing it, called our lawyer, she met us there. We called the bank, they denied it, after being passed around, they apologized, sent the guys away. But now the locks were broken. They said they deemed the house abandoned (nevermind the constant open houses, the house perfectly staged inside (and visible from windows), and the realtor sign in the front yard.
A few months later, we decided to just go ahead and get foreclosed on. They were busy tacking on huge fees those few months, we made some payments, they seemed to not get recorded. But I ignored it at that point, as we decided to declare BK and I didn't care/couldn't deal with it anymore.

So that is my Indymac experience. This was 2007, maybe they are different now, more willing to work with homeowners.

Indymac Update

So far I haven't paid since Sept. Indymac sent me a notification on Nov. 1st telling me if I didn't become current by Nov. 16th that they would begin the forclosure process on Dec. 16. They have tried to reach me multiple times as of now no forclosure and today Dec. 30th I received a normal statement telling me what I owe and what I'll owe after the Jan 16th.

Thanks for the update Devo. Please keep these up.

I'm interested in seeing how this unfolds.

Are you putting aside some savings due to your reduced expenditure ?

On January 2st we went 120 days past due with Indy. Currently, we are in the process of filing a CH13 and will work to get the second mortgage, through Citi, modified off of the house and changed to unsecured debt. I called them when we were 60 days late and they gave me a ridiculous payment schedule and didn't even discuss a modification.

I am in Vegas also. We bought almost three years ago for $336,000 and it's now worth about $190,000. Biggest mistake of my life. I've used what I had for mortgage payments to catch up utilities, daycare, school tuition for one of the kids, car insurance, credit card pmts, etc. I will be ready to file this month so I'm not worried about it. They have not sent me anything other than regular monthly statements.

I hear that they were just bought out so who knows what they are doing now.

I have Indy mac also. They are ****. They make you jump through hoops and then say they can not help you at this time.