South Bend, Indiana
The crazy road that lead me to this point. It all started a few years ago, my husband was introduced to a "REI/Broker" who got him started in real estate investing/rentals. Which is all fine and dandy, and can be a very profitable industry, when dealing with someone who is actually doing things on the up and up. Unfortunatly that was not the case with this person, topped with the fact that my husband was inexperienced and overly trusting at the time. Well this "investor/broker" sold my husband 5 houses (in the worst neighborhoods in town), with "cash back at closing" While unbeknownst to us, this guy was using his own appraiser who valued the homes way high. Which ended up causing us to overpay on everyone of them. After the broker sold him the forth house, he had asked my husband for a loan of $10,000 to help him close on another "investment" of his. Which my husband gave him, the 10k was almost the exact amount from the cash back at closings on the 4 propeties. A contract was written, that my husband wo9uld loan him 10k, and the broker would pay interest of $10.00 a day, with the full amount to be paid back in 30 - 60 days time. They both signed it, but husband was never given a copy of the signed contract. (they were in the driveway or some such stuff, so he said he would make a copy and get it to my husband and never did) Then sold husband the 5th house (while still hounding the broker to re-pay the loan and to get us a copy of the contract), which was suppose to be a cash back deal as well, only broker just kept it for himself. Three of the homes had "tenants" in them, who were rented to no more than 30 days before wed bought them. These tenants ended up not paying or paying only a sliver of the monthly rent. My husband being a nice person had a soft heart to thier reasons on why they couldnt pay rent that month, and let them slide. Well since we had mortgages on all 5 houses, we were left making all the mortgage payments out of our own pockets. My husband being nice and trying to give everyone a fair chance, would let it go, until they were 120 - 150 or more days behind before starting eviction proceedings against them. We would get the one set of tenants out, then go in and fix/clean/paint/carpet the property, screen new tenants and place them, only to have to repeat the whole process over and over again. We were barely keeping our heads above water with all of them, thanks to 2 jobs and credit cards. About 2 months after closing on the 5th house, the broker disappeared. We had heard that he had left the state as he also owed alot of other people large sums of money as well, so he skipped town. At the same time it came out that his partner was arrested and in jail for fraud and a few other non - real estate related crimes. We didnt think there was really anything we could do, except trying to keep the ones we had afloat. We were able to keep everything up for about 6 months. It took us maxing out every available line of credit we had to do so. As we were heading into the deep red zone, we decided to try and short sale 4 of the properties, and we moved into the 5th one ( as we had just recently got married and before we were doing the room mate thing with others). We talked to a real estate agent who was suppose to specialize in short sales. Only to find that swince we paid wayyyy to much for the properties, no one would touch them with a 10 foot pole. With no options left, all 4 went back to the banks. We kept up with our house payment for the one we lived in, and thought we were doing good. Well for about a year or two anyways. Our mortgage company for the house we lived in was CountryWide, and then it was sold to Bank of America. We both ended up getting laid off, due to an RV/trailer factory closing up shop. It affected ALOT of people in St. Joseph and Elkhart counties. We were okay for awhile, but when we started to struggle and hit the 30 days behind on the mortgage, we called BoA and started the Home Loan Modification preocess. The person that we were working with from BoA had told us, since we were only 30 days behind it would be harder to prove that we needed the modification, so he told us to not make anymore payments, as it garranteed that we would get a modification this way. We figured that since he worked for the bank that he would know what he was talking about. They sent a list of everything that they needed us to send to them for the modifaction. We faxed the stuff, from a public fax, on 3 different occassions, mailed it back to them using their supplied fed-ex envolpe twice, and then faxed it to them again, this time we faxed it from a local bank of america branch. The person that helped up fax it from the branch, also called the perswon we were working with for the modifaction to make sure they got it, which they said they did receive it. A week later, we received a letter in the mail from BoA stating that they never received any of it, and they were going to foreclose on us. We went to a credit councelor type place (green leaf) to try and work something / anything out with BoA so we didnt lose our home. BoA made it very clear that they were not going to work with us in any possible way, it was either forclosure or pay off the loan in full in 30 days. Well there was absolutly no way we could pay it, nor did we have the credit to be able to pull a loan to pay it off either. We had no options, they foreclosed, we moved and started renting a home from a family members spouse's uncle. The agreement was we would make payments to them, in the amount to cover the mortgage on it (like a rto), as they had married and moved to a bigger home. The house needed alot of work and we made all repairs out of our own pockets. Electric needed up date, Plumbing had alot of issues, the house was full of stuff left from the last people to live there, holes in walls, needed paint, hardwood floors needed to be sanded and re-finished, and bought appliances as there were none. Which we did all of it. Six months in, landlord calls and has some story about how he had both a homestead exemption and the mortgage exemption in his name on the house, and the mortgage company found out he wasnt living there, and he had worked it out with the mortgage company that "he would pay a lump sum to them of 4k and then the payments would jump up by $150 a month" He called us and asked if we would be okay with that, and we really had no choice but to be okay with it. We had just sunk about 10k into the house and could afford to move again. About 7 or 8 months go by and one day we get a notice rubberbanded to the door handle. Landlord had not made a mortgage payment since January 2014, and the home was being foreclosed on. Husband went down and talked to the landlord about it, and his response..."oh yeah, I was gonna get ahold of you about that" His story being that he made the deal about the exemptions with the bank, but they sold the loan before the deal was "complete" and the new mortgage company was refusing to honor the deal. And that the new mortgage company had changed the mortgage payment to over $1600 a month in order to pay back the money for the exemption thing, and that he had been sending them the $900 that we paid each month in rent, but that they kept it and only counted it as a half payment, so thats why they were saying the payment hadnt been made at all in 2014. We have no idea how much truth there is to his story, the landlord had also told us that he was going to get a lawyer and try and save the house, although I am fairly sure that never happened. Shortly after there was another notice on the door, the house was set to be sold at the sherriff sale. We had called and talked to the dept of housing and Urban devolpment for our city/county to see what we could do, if anything. They told us that there was nothing we could do, and we basically just had to eat it and smile and be happy about it. The house did go to the sheriff sale and was bought back by the bank about a month ago. We received a letter from the bank a few weeks ago, that we needed to contact the local real estate agent that is handling the property for them. Which I did, and she was suppose to put a relocation assistance request in with the bank, in exchange for us moving out in 30 days time. After this fiasco with a landlord, and the fact that our family has grown over the years, we dont want to rent, but at the same time we cant qualify for traditional financing either. So, we have been looking into land contracts and seller financing. We have been trying to work with a local broker, who is suppose to specialize in land contracts and the like. But it is extremely hard to get anywhere with him, from asking where we are at with talking to seller agents, to even asking simple questions and having to send 2 or 3 e-mails over a few days in order to get a response. I have explained our time table to him and still it is not moving us forward at all. We have put offers on a few properties, and 1 we were beat out by a cash buyer, then we found one that would work really well for us, not perfect but really workable, only to have seller who was open to land contracts decided that they want 25% down. Found yet another that would be okay, but agent doesnt think he would get credit for the sale, so he doesnt seem interested in persuing it. Instead trys to sell us on a house he has on his "list" that isnt even livable at this point.
I was hoping someone here would be able to refer me to someone or a company that does seller financed properties in the south bend, Indiana Area or the Niles, Michigan area. Thank You for taking the time to read my post.