Lookin for advice
Member since 2026 · 1 post · 3 votes
Lookin for advice
11 Replies
- 2wNicholas FloydBusiness MemberNY · Member since 2026 · 166 posts · 56 votes
I’m sorry you’re going through that. With that much equity, I personally wouldn’t rush into selling until you’ve explored every realistic option first.
I’d probably start by talking with your mortgage servicer, a reputable nonprofit credit counselor, and possibly a real estate attorney or financial professional who can look at the full picture. Sometimes there are options around repayment plans, restructuring debt, or simply giving your credit some time to recover that may help you avoid making a permanent decision during a temporary rough period.
If keeping the house is important to you and the monthly payment is still manageable, I’d definitely get a few professional opinions before putting it on the market. Selling may still end up being the right move, but I’d want to know I exhausted the alternatives first.
- 2wStacy RaskinBusiness MemberLender · Member since 2022 · 1k+ posts · 494 votes
I think getting some more expert opinions might be helpful. Also, why your credit is lower matters- for many mortgage programs as long as you haven't missed mortgage payments, there might be some refinance options. Also, if your property is a current investment property then you can do a DSCR loan where your debt to income (DTI) ratios wont't be used and it will be based on the property rent. Paying off personal debt like credit card debt is important but not sure if selling the answer is the answer. Having more information would be helpful. It might be the right move if you're no longer working, you're very unlikely to get additional income any other way and you have no other way to pay your debt obligations.
Bright Skyline518 Reviews - 2wMike CohenPro MemberReal Estate Broker · Knoxville TN · Member since 2026 · 12 posts · 3 votes
Hi Gaston, I would be happy to analyze this with you, we should connect!
- Investor · Get yourself trained before doing something inadvisable. · Member since 2024 · 3k+ posts · 1k+ votes2w
Quote from @Gaston Duarte:
Hi everyone, I’m new in bigger packets And I’m looking for advice .
I went to a very difficult personal and financial times.
I own house in OC county. With an about $350 K in equity. My credit get very damage in last 4 months because of my personal circumstances. Currently my credit about 610-620. I feel like my only option is to sell the house to cover about 30 k in credit cards . I will love to save my house as investment property and not sell it but because my credit got so damaged I can’t refinance the house or use heloc to take some cash to pay personal debts I find my only option is to sell .
any advice ?Have you considered offering your house on a lease to own option, getting 10% of the sales price up front and preserving equity by not needing a real estate agent?
- 2wArman AhmedPro MemberReal Estate Agent · Columbus Cleveland Dayton, OH · Member since 2024 · 2k+ posts · 904 votes
Quote from @Gaston Duarte:
Hi everyone, I’m new in bigger packets And I’m looking for advice .
I went to a very difficult personal and financial times.
I own house in OC county. With an about $350 K in equity. My credit get very damage in last 4 months because of my personal circumstances. Currently my credit about 610-620. I feel like my only option is to sell the house to cover about 30 k in credit cards . I will love to save my house as investment property and not sell it but because my credit got so damaged I can’t refinance the house or use heloc to take some cash to pay personal debts I find my only option is to sell .
any advice ?Hey Gaston, sorry you’re dealing with all of that. Before selling, I’d talk with a good lender and run through every option, especially if the house has around $350K in equity. A damaged credit score doesn’t necessarily mean selling is your only choice, so I’d make sure you’ve explored all the possibilities before giving up the property.
- Attorney · 10451 Mill Run Cir #755 Owings Mills, MD 21117 · Member since 2024 · 300 posts · 112 votes2w
Quote from @Gaston Duarte:
Hi everyone, I’m new in bigger packets And I’m looking for advice .
I went to a very difficult personal and financial times.
I own house in OC county. With an about $350 K in equity. My credit get very damage in last 4 months because of my personal circumstances. Currently my credit about 610-620. I feel like my only option is to sell the house to cover about 30 k in credit cards . I will love to save my house as investment property and not sell it but because my credit got so damaged I can’t refinance the house or use heloc to take some cash to pay personal debts I find my only option is to sell .
any advice ?@Gaston Duarte, one thing I’ve learned from working with property owners is that I would not make this decision based only on the amount of equity in the house.
I would first look at what keeping the house actually does for you every month.
What is the full monthly cost of the property? What could it realistically rent for? After the mortgage, taxes, insurance, repairs, vacancy, and management, would keeping it actually help your cash flow or make things tighter?
I’ve seen people work very hard to save a property because they have a lot of equity in it, but the property itself was still putting pressure on them every month.
I would also run the other side before selling. After selling costs, any taxes that may apply, paying the credit cards, and whatever housing you would need afterward, how much would you really have left?
Once you put both choices next to each other, the decision usually becomes much clearer.
I would not rush into selling, but I also would not keep the house only because you do not want to lose the equity. The goal is to choose the option that leaves you in a stronger position going forward.
Since you’re in California, I would speak with a local real estate and tax professional before making the final decision.
- 2wG. Brian DavisPro MemberInvestor · Hatboro, PA · Member since 2016 · 2k+ posts · 842 votes
I wouldn’t rush to sell the house just because your credit took a hit. You have a lot of equity there, and selling is a pretty permanent decision. I’d first see if there’s another way to deal with the $30K in credit card debt while keeping the house. Maybe talk to a few lenders and see what options you have, even with the lower credit score. If the house makes sense as a rental, I’d want to explore every option before giving up that equity. Your credit can recover. Once you sell the house, you can’t undo that decision.
- Real Estate Consultant · Destin, FL · Member since 2026 · 14 posts · 12 votes2w
Gaston,
I wouldn't sell the house yet. I also wouldn't tell you to keep it — anyone offering you a confident verdict this early hasn't been paying attention, they've been pattern-matching.
You don't have enough on the table yet to make either call intelligently, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.
The part of your post that actually got my attention isn't the 610–620 credit score. It's the $350,000 of equity sitting quietly in the background while everyone stares at the more dramatic number. That's not a rounding error — that's a fundamentally different species of problem than a $30,000 debt issue. One is a bruise. The other is a balance sheet.
You've got an asset carrying substantial equity, credit that took a hit from what sounds like a genuine personal crisis rather than habitual mismanagement, and $30,000 of unsecured debt making just enough noise — like a smoke detector with a dying battery — that it's tempting to solve the entire situation with a single closing statement. Sometimes that's precisely correct. And sometimes it's the financial equivalent of selling the cow because you'd like a glass of milk — an act of profound impatience dressed up as decisiveness.
Before that house goes anywhere near a listing agent, I'd want four numbers, not opinions:
What you owe on the house, and at what rate — the actual rate, not the one you remember from the closing table three refinances ago.
What the house is genuinely worth today — not Zillow's algorithmically optimistic cousin, but what a competent appraiser, or three honest comparable sales, would actually support.
What it would realistically rent for if you held it — realistically being the operative word, not the number a hopeful property manager quotes to win the listing.
And most importantly — what your monthly personal balance sheet looks like right now: income, mortgage payment, minimum payments on the cards, and everything else quietly draining the checking account every month like a leak you haven't found yet.
Because the $30,000 doesn't alarm me nearly as much as the possibility that it's merely the visible tip of something considerably larger sitting below the waterline.
If the personal financial situation has genuinely stabilized, and you're sitting on $350K of equity in a property with sound rental economics, I'd be extremely reluctant to let a temporary credit problem manufacture a permanent liquidation of an appreciating asset — not before you've exhausted every other reasonable option.
On the other hand, if the bleeding hasn't stopped, keeping the house purely because the equity number looks impressive on paper can become an expensive hobby — admiring a valuable asset while it slowly eats you alive from the inside, one minimum payment at a time.
The house isn't the answer. The equity isn't the answer. The credit score most certainly isn't the answer. They're symptoms, and treating a symptom as a diagnosis is how otherwise sensible people talk themselves into decisions they'll be explaining to a therapist in three years.
We need to understand the machine underneath all three.
If you're willing, put rough numbers here — purchase price, current value, mortgage balance and rate, monthly payment, realistic rent, annual taxes and insurance, your monthly income, and roughly what that $30K in cards is actually costing you every month. Then we stop speculating and start examining the actual problem instead of its more photogenic symptoms.
And Gaston — whatever happened over the last four months, don't let four difficult months author a twenty-year decision. That's not resilience. That's just letting a bad quarter hold the pen.
- DC Dobbs
Gulf Coast Emerald, LLC
- 2wAshish AcharyaBusiness MemberCPA, CFP®, PFS · FL · Member since 2017 · 5k+ posts · 3k+ votes
Gaston, with roughly $350K of equity and about $30K of credit-card debt, I’d be very careful about turning unsecured debt into debt secured by your home just because the monthly payment looks better.
A HELOC or cash-out refinance may lower the interest rate compared with credit cards, but it also puts your home behind that debt. And if HELOC proceeds are used to pay personal credit-card balances, the interest generally doesn't become deductible just because the loan is secured by your house.
Before deciding you have to sell, I’d compare three things side by side: what you would actually net after selling costs and taxes, what a realistic home-equity option would cost monthly, and whether there’s enough income stability to handle that new payment without ending up back on the cards.
If this has been your primary residence and you meet the ownership-and-use requirements, the Section 121 home-sale exclusion may also allow some or all of the gain to be excluded from federal tax. That’s worth calculating before assuming how much cash a sale would actually put in your pocket.
Given what you described, I’d prioritize protecting liquidity and getting the personal balance sheet stable first. You can always revisit using real estate as an investment once you’re no longer making decisions under financial pressure.
Feel free to DM me, I’d be happy to send over a few resources that might help you compare the options.
INVESTOR FRIENDLY CPA®5241 Reviews - Investor · Get yourself trained before doing something inadvisable. · Member since 2024 · 3k+ posts · 1k+ votes11h
Quote from @Gaston Duarte:
Hi everyone, I’m new in bigger packets And I’m looking for advice .
I went to a very difficult personal and financial times.
I own house in OC county. With an about $350 K in equity. My credit get very damage in last 4 months because of my personal circumstances. Currently my credit about 610-620. I feel like my only option is to sell the house to cover about 30 k in credit cards . I will love to save my house as investment property and not sell it but because my credit got so damaged I can’t refinance the house or use heloc to take some cash to pay personal debts I find my only option is to sell .
any advice ?Have you calculated the cost of selling the house? Generally it's about 9% of the value of the house and it eats up what you thought was going into your pocket. Instead try to learn alternative was to buy houses that allow you to keep what you've got. I use Subject To, Wraps and Lease Options most often but there are other choices as well.
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