Did you see the "Nightline" story several weeks ago? People leaving their foreclosures in shambles, stripping everything of value (e.g. kitchen sink) and leaving their pets behind, locked in the house with no food/water. Unbelievable.

I've heard that a lot of people who overpayed for houses that have, in turn, dropped in value are buying a second home then abandoning the first home.

There was an article on that posted in this forum recently. The practice borders on mortgage fraud and they are (at least in FL) talking about prosecuting these folks.

I just went through this. Use moving as an opportunity to declutter and make an honest assessment of what you really need and want to keep. I've been in my new place in Phoenix since late March and I still have about 20 boxes of stuff I haven't bothered to unpack. Did I really need all that? It's hard to toss stuff, but it makes no sense to keep a lot of it.

Not to hijack but.

I can't fathom just leaving a house for whatever reason. WTH??!!!

I understand not being able to pay but what does that teach your kids or others? "Oh well, if you can't pay, just leave it."

Is this what is becoming of our society?

Yes:



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/416424-foreclosure-my-street-not-me.html?highlight=foreclosure

Just moved for the second time in 7 months.

Sold NY house, moved into a lease in TX while new house was being built.

Half the stuff was in the lease the other half in storage.

Royal PIA.

There is a diff between can't and won't.

After all if you truly can't pay the bank'l boot your butt themselves.

The tree has been removed from my garage and after I leave work today and tomorrowI will be unloading the garage into a storage unit. I will also be using this as a time to simplify and discard.

When I move I treat it as a two part process. Part one I discard a whole lot of stuff. THEN I start packing for the move.

I put up a sign about 2 months before the move that says "What you keep, you move" and the garage sale and donations to DAV start.

When the time ever comes to move out of the place I am now, I've already decided I'll gladly pay for a one to two-month overlap with our new place in order to make the moving process spread out over time rather than feeling some kind of idiotic pressure to "do it all at once" because that's conventionally how everyone else does it. Screw that. I'll take a carload at a time over several days or weeks. Much easier and more manageable.

The cost of paying two rents or mortgages for a couple of months is far less than it would cost to either (1) have a moving company do it (and lose/break/steal all your stuff) or (2) the aggrivation and mental hell of doing it all at once. Forget that.

Good skills. Haha, once I was moving and there was a dinning room table and chairs I no longer wanted so I put them on the side of the footpath outside my house. I thought I better go back in and write "Free" on a bit of cardboard as a sign. By the time I got Out 5 or 10 minutes later the table and chairs were gone.

That's what I did when I bought my house. It allowed me to paint the new place, take care of any maintenance issues, get rid of a bunch of crap, and move basically one room at a time.

Then again, I only moved a mile away, and the rent at my old place was dirt cheap. A bit difficult to do if one is moving to another state.

I once moved 5 times in 2 years from CA to two diff states and back. This also meant retrieving stored stuff equal to a whole house from CA to NV and then back to CA after a year. This really made it 6 moves.

AFA leaving a house, well I left one that I was able to sell only to take with me my possessions, not much money, if any. 2-3 more months and the bank would have had it. This is what happens in times just like right now. I didn't have any funny loans either, I just lost my down payment and all the equity built up in the previous decline. It doesn't take long in CA when they go down 30-35 % in 3 years.