Landlord in foreclosure

First of all, do not pay her the rent. Think of it this way. She has screwed you this far, are you really willing to give her the money you might need for a new down payment on a new place? if she doesnt have the money to pay her mortgage, what makes you think she will be able to afford to take you to court for eviction. and by the time it finally makes it into eviction status, the property will most likely not be hers anymore anyhow. I'm in the exact same situation. My landlord failed to tell me he had not paid the mortgage in 6 months. i recieved a note on my door saying my place was to be auctioned off on june 1st. I'm still in the same place now. i'm not paying rent. I work in the title industry and understand the laws. i'm pretty sure that one day soon a realtor will knock at my door and offer me "cash for keys" to vacate. my neighbor had this same problem about a year ago. his landlord got foreclosed on. he stayed in the place well after the landlord stopped paying. he ended up getting 8 months rent free and in the end they paid him 1200 dollars to vacate. my best advice is: stop paying rent.

elee, please do not advise people to do things that can harm them. If the above poster, or any poster whose LL is facing foreclosure on the rented house stops paying rent, they will be evicted. The LL still has every property right until the day that the bank takes the house back or until the deed is registered after an auction of the property. Until then, the LL can and will evict.

Not all states are expensive or slow to evict. Here an eviction costs only $124 and takes less than a month. I can have the sheriff schedule a set out of their property on the streets only 3 days later for another $25. Although the LL may not be able to afford the hundreds or thousands of dollars in mortgage payments, most can come up with $149. Once an eviction is filed, it stays on the court record - even if you win or it is later dropped. Future LLs, employers, or anyone can see it because it is a punblic record. It stays on the record for years! Most LLs automatically refuse anyone who has had eviction filed on them and don't even look further to see if they won or lost. It will hurt their chances to find good housing later.

Additionally, not all banks do cash for keys. In this economy, fewer and fewer banks are doing this. Since the banks already have attorneys on retainer, it costs them very little to do an eviction anymore. Many will merely give you the required notice to vacate and then evict. In some states, that notice to vacate can be as little as 7 days! How do you know that the poster doesn't live in that state? Could you or anyone else possibly be moved out in as little as 7 days? And in your case, since you haven't been paying your rent, your notice to vacate before eviction could be as few as 3 days! While this strategy may have worked well in the past, it no longer does. I hope for your sake that it works out well for you. But don't be surprised if you don't get a 3 day on your door instead of a check. Please do not give poor advise to those on the board when you have no idea of what state or laws they fall under.

Ok. Are you sure your not one of the Landlords that are in foreclosure too? Are you clear about the stages of foreclosure? I totally understand what you mean about being careful about advice given, but this is the internet. People should not automatically trust anything they read without looking up facts to back it up. In my case doing a simple Foreclosure search on google will reaveal that the things i'm saying are true. maybe not for your state, I understand that. but for most states my situation hold true. In fact it was a headline on the news less than a week ago "cash for keys" here in my state. I'm one of those people who dont enjoy seeing people get screwed and try to help them find a way out. and even if What your saying is completley true, even in that circumstance, at least the people will get some free rent. Something they will need since they were given no notice of the situation. it's not like people are trying to take advantage. sticking around just makes it fair. In the meantime have a back up plan and a place to go, it's that simple. in my case most of my things are packed and in the garage. So yes I can leave in any amount of time given to me. however they cannot just show up and kick you out that fast. even worst case senerio i've never seen people get kicked out in 3 days. Also if you remember i said i worked in the industry. I actually process foreclosures. As does my husband. When I process a foreclosure, part of the terms of the contract given is that the current tenants or people in possession of the actual property meaning "renters" have rights that must be succumed to by the bank or the buyer. If this is not the case for your state, i'd probably move. Any state that would allow a good renter to be treated that way outta be ashamed. if you dont believe me, call up any lender or realtor in your area right now and ask advice. 9 out of 10 will tell you to stay as long as you can. also check out this website. here is just one recent source of what i'm saying, and it's not even in my state. Good luck.

I have read that article. Unfortunately for most readers here, that article is from an area that is out of the norm. It happen to be from tenant-friendly CA. An area with some of the most pro-tenant laws around. CA allows rent control, LLs paying tenants exhorbitant fees to get tenants to leave, PRE-move out inspections (not POST move outs like the rest of the country), and requirements that LLs must send receipts WITH the deposit statement if damages are greater than $125. And those are just the start of the tenant friendly laws there. That area is distinct in that. Few other areas of the country have these protections. We could only imagine those types of protections for tenants.

Thus other areas of the country are already stopping these cash for keys. In the midwest where foreclosure rates are the highest, cash for keys is almost unheard of. There are too many foreclosures for the banks to do this. Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are in dire straits here. Some mortgage banks have already gone under because of the high number of foreclosures. Mortage companies have tightened up regulations so strictly that few people can even get mortgages. These banks can no longer afford to do this program. There are as many houses in foreclosure as there are those on the market for sale. See statistics for Michigan and OH to start. Those states have been hit with huge job losses from manufacturing and have sky-high foreclosure rates.

Your view of the situation is based on what you see in your home state. It is fortunate for you that your state is in much better financial shape than other areas of the country. The economy there is better able to handle those foreclosures. The industry in CA didn't rely as heavily on manaufacturing, steel, and other jobs that have now been outsourced overseas. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in the midwest to China and Mexico alone. Textiles in the south are losing business to foreign import competition. Many mills have closed. I can't even begin to list all the areas hard hit by this foreclosure crisis and the poor economy. These areas, and other areas of the country, cannot afford to pay people to get out. You are going to see fewer and fewer cash for keys as these property foreclosures increase (which they will for the next year at least).

For the tenants that have the misfortune to rent in these types of areas, they can't expect cash for keys. They can expect an eviction notice on their doors. Evictions have become cheaper, and cut rate attorneys do dozens of them a day for a flat rate apiece. An attorney in some areas will do the actual eviction for only $150. (Add to that the cost of $149 for the court filings here, and the total eviction is less than $300. Cash for keys is way more expensive!) So not only can the LL evict, but the mortgage company once foreclosure is complete.

You may have worked in the industry, but things are different in other parts of the country. A 3 day notice is standard in many states before the eviction is filed. The wait for court is still short in many states, less than a month. After an eviction, many states allow only 72 hours before a set out by the sheriff. With so many on the books, courts can't delay on these. They need to process them and move on as quickly as possible.

While all states have foreclosure processes they have to follow and the actual foreclosure process is slow, the tenants in other states may not have as many rights. They have the right to be notified of the foreclosure steps as they progress. They have the right to recieve the required amount of notice to vacate as state law says for a month to month tenant (most states' laws says once foreclosure is final, it terminates a lease). Not all states give tenants 30 days to leave on a month to month. NC gives the fewest by only giving the tenant 7 DAYS to get out! AL, AR, CO, & LA give 10 days, UT & FL give 15 days, and WA gives 20 (to name a few off the top of my head). CA is one of the most generous in giving you 60 days to vacate if you have lived there more than a year. The mortgage company must give the required amount of notice to leave. So if you live in one of these states, expect to get fewer than 30 days notice to get out. Then expect the 3 day and the eviction filed.

Yes, it is lousy that tenants are the innocent victims in this. They pay rent but the LL doesn't pay the mortgage. Still, they have a legal contract they must live up to. If they fail to pay rent, they can easily and cheaply be evicted. This will hurt their ability to find decent housing later. Most LLs won't accept anyone who has been recently evicted, no matter what the circumstances. So the next LL won't listen to the story about why they were evicted. They just get denied. And no, I am not a LL in foreclosure.

Well thanks for humoring me even still. (: That was great information you just gave us. Thank you. It's very sad that these unfortunate situations are happening to so many innocent victims. I understand what they are going through. It's a very scary process. Especially if you are a good renter who always pays on time etc. to be put into a situation in which you are punished for such an act, is very disheartening. Take care. And thanks for all the adivce.

Just wanted to keep you posted on my tenant foreclosure situation. The realtor finally came to the door yesterday. He offered us 3,000 dollars to be out in 30 days. We gladly accepted. I suppose i'm lucky it all worked out the way I hoped. Good luck guys.

I too live in Florida and undergoing the same thing, the property I am renting is in foreclosure proceedings. My lease expired July 1, 2008, but the property manager is stating that I am on a month to month contract. I told her that I would place July 2008 rent in an escrow account and leave by July 31st 2008. I asked her to use the security deposit in the amount of one month's rent as the rent for the month. She said she would not, and that the landlord can do whatever he wants with that money. (I asked if it was in a separate account.) I sent them a notice of intent to vacate on July 14th by certified mail. A three day notice to pay rent or deliver possession was placed in my door by the property manager. My intention is to leave and since they are not giving me my security deposit back, why should I give them any more money?

Also, I paid down on another rental. (OH BOY...) the property manager there agreed to fix up some things prior to the end of this month and she did not. I told her that I wanted my deposit back if these things were not done. She has not done them and is now saying I will not be able to get my deposit money back. I did not sign a lease. Can she do this?

Thanks in advance for any help!

The foreclosure proceedings will take quite a while and will not be completed before you vacate. They will have no bearing on your tenancy. Since you do not state any habitability problems with the rental, you have no legal right to place any rent into escrow. A pending foreclosure is not a legal reason to rent withhold. Without any habitability issues, you cannot do this. That is why you have received a Pay or Quit notice pending an eviction. You cannot rent withhold, nor can you apply the deposit towards any rent. That deposit, by law, cannot be touched until you vacate. (Meaning you have failed to pay the rent and the LL can evict you.) You should have paid your rent when it was due. If you are not out by the end of the 3rd day, he can file eviction. If filed, it will show up on your court records for years, and since it is a public record, ANYONE can see it. Move out within the 3 days and return all keys to the LL within that time.

As for the other rental, did you get a receipt for the deposit? If the property is not ready for move in and you have signed no lease, they do have to return your deposit.

Most in the same situation are renting until they build their credit back up and get past the situation, on a foreclosure you need to be at least 3 years past it with payments made to all tradelines of credit on time during those 3 yrs............it is obtaining a new " mortgage loan" that would be considered fraudulent.

You can hire an attorney...National Association of Consumer Advocates – Consumer Protection Advocates and Attorneys or try a non profit to help with the modification like HOPE at 1-888-995-HOPE.

If you are going through the modification process with Chase, they are modifying most of their loans as long as you can show that you can afford the modification going forward........

Thank you for your response. I looked into the Florida statutes and you are absolutely right. I would like to know if these court proceedings (eviction) can affect my PURCHASING a home in the near future. Please let me know and thanks again.