IMO, this young lady (age 35-40?) is two jokers short of a full deck. First of all, she apparently still has minor (school-age?) kids living with her and her spouse and now believes that renting (while paying HIGHER rent than her former PITI? and being at the mercy of a landlord’s whims) is preferable to being a homeowner. She claims she had been a homeowner for 15 years and was “tired of it” but didn’t list any complaints about the home itself or neighborhood. Since she didn’t mention any other homes but the one she just sold, we’ll just assume she owned the home she just sold for 15 years and it was their first home.
Probable backstory: We all know that the 15 years between 1998 and 2013 (the date of the article), she and her spouse have had plenty of opportunities to “fog a mirror” in order to remove home “equity.” I would bet marbles to chalk that that is exactly what they did, getting themselves into “hot water” and later accepting a “40 year mod deal” from their lender. After they paid their 2% “modded” payments for ~2 years, they probably sat down, (finally) did the math and realized that it would take them way too long to pay down the new note with all their back interest payments folded into it (which they defaulted upon while under those “exotic” terms they signed up for in the mid-aughts), lol. So they came to the conclusion that they had already removed most of their home “equity” and would try to get out by the skin of their teeth and were successful in doing so only due to the passage of time. Of course, their credit is now shot and so they can’t qualify for any mortgages at present. Thus, they’re now “happy” smiley-faced renters who aren’t “trapped” anymore by their evil house :=)
She doesn’t state that she was or is employed full time but it appears she may be a tax professional so she at least has steady work 4 months per year. However, she DID state that she herself still has student loans (plural) and you have to ask yourself why she co-signed a purchase-money note with her spouse in the first place with those outstanding student loans looming over her head (likely at 6-8% interest)! The reader also has to wonder why, now (15 years later), she still has (the same two?) outstanding student loans (plural)!
Really dumb all the way around. She isn’t the first “accountant-type” in the interwebz that has made sorry a$$ personal financial decisions and she won’t be the last.
