Sherriff in Illinois refusing to serve foreclosures

[bumbershoot]

I think this whole renter crisis is INSANE! Can you imagine living in a house, paying faithfully and then BOOM, you're out of a house. People where I live would be devastated. Rental properties are at a premium here. We don't have apartment complexes and it's so hard to find a house to rent.

I didn't experience it first hand, but it is terrifying.

My MIL and FIL went in on a whole duplex with my BIL and his partner. Because FIL had been through a bankruptcy and MIL didn't work, and b/c BIL had been in bankruptcy as well, his partner was the one who got the mortgage. And then he was living in some weird world where he wasn't telling BIL how much he made and he was overspending and blah blah blah, BIL borrowed a big sum of money from MIL and then the partner borrowed a bunch of money from her. On top of that, she had put down a HUGE amount for the downpayment, and then they of course paid rent.

They didn't know BIL's partner wasn't paying rent, for almost a year, until the new owners came to the house to try to figure out who exactly was living in the house.

It was horrifying. Since they were family, they had no contracts. Actually, we had rented BIL and his old condo, and it was their utter refusal to write a contract (was supposed to be lease-to-own) solidifying terms and conditions that caused me to insist we leave at the end of that year.

MIL lost the money the partner borrowed, forgave what her son borrowed (he went into day-trading with that money so it was GONE anyway), and lost, forever, the 50K downpayment she had made.

They thought this place was where they would be forever. MIL is Korean and BIL is the oldest son, and in that culture the oldest son takes care of the parents, so it was natural for them to think that that was the situation.

They actually found out about it a week or two after the partner packed up and took all the stuff in his name (the ONE convenient thing for BIL and the lack of legal gay marriage in WA is that his ex's creditors couldn't come after him for his debts!) and left the state, leaving the situation and my BIL in one fell swoop. Awful awful awful.

I see no reason why a bank should be obligated to terms of a contract to which they were not a party.

Renter has a contract with owner...has nothing to do with contract between owner and bank, right? So why should a renter, solid in their contract with the owner, be kicked out before lease end when they have done nothing wrong, right?

That said, a renter should be aware that this can happen. We had sort of ignored it until a couple months ago when our condo-owner came to us to tell us she wanted to sell all her properties. She's a great landlady and we HATED that she is thinking that way! But the price she's going to put on this place (after our lease ends) is almost twice as much as 3 recently sold or on the market condos in the building have gone for. And the more expensive of the 3 still hasn't sold since June. So I don't think we have much to worry about, since she's being absolutely unrealistic (and this was a couple months ago). But it does mean we'll have to find Yet Another Place to live, when we thought we could settle down with our fave landlady's place for a couple years!

 

[rparmfamily]

Buck......not that you care, but I truly find it hard to believe you're as cold-hearted and uncaring about your fellow man as you come across on these boards.

So I'm not the only person who notices this I guess.

 

[BuckNaked]

IRenter has a contract with owner...has nothing to do with contract between owner and bank, right? So why should a renter, solid in their contract with the owner, be kicked out before lease end when they have done nothing wrong, right?

The key here is that the contract is between renter and owner. Renter can't help it if owner doesn't pay the mortgage note, but the bank has nothing to do with the original contract. Why should they have to honor it?

 

[rparmfamily]

What can a renter do to protect themselves against this happening? I rent out my home in Florida and it's not like my property manager has ever requested proof I am current on my mortgage, nor would I expect him to ask.

 

[Galahad]

The key here is that the contract is between renter and owner. Renter can't help it if owner doesn't pay the mortgage note, but the bank has nothing to do with the original contract. Why should they have to honor it?

Some States require it (as I said with N.C.). But the farthest it would go is the end of that lease term. For example, if your lease expires and you are now "month to month" with rent and they are waiting to foreclose, they could start the process at the end of that lease. I would think most States have guidelines for notifying tenants as well. Life certainly isn't fair to the lenders either I suppose.

 

[Carly_Roach]

So I'm not the only person who notices this I guess.

No, you're not. But here's the thing:

The people who think that the poor, defenseless bank (who just got a $820 billion dollar government bailout package) is being stolen from and the renters should be evicted; their opinions about this would change if they were a renter who payed on time (or even early) each month, they had a lease for years and renewed it every year, and they came home from work one day when it had rained all day to find every single stick of furniture and every scrap of clothing they owned sitting on the curb outside the house, along with their crying kids and angry husband, who'd be on the phone trying to get a rental truck AND secure a place to sleep that evening.

Not to mention that when your furniture and possessions get thrown on the curb, people just come by and take off with what they want. So now she has to deal not only with losing her home, but with losing her mother's antique kitchen table, her aunt's quilts, and all of her grandmother's jewelry. And don't forget: the rain has waterlogged every stick of furniture because it's been sitting outside all day, so all that's gone, too.

And what did she do wrong? She paid the rent on time, or early, each month. She had a lease each and every year they lived there and she had plenty of time left on the current lease. There was no notice on the door like there should have been because the bank either didn't hire a process server to nail it up or the one they hired just took the money and didn't do the job and the bank didn't check to make sure the job was done.

People can (and will) be smug and uncaring about things like this until they see it happen to people they know (which will probably occur any day now). Then their attitudes will change 180 degrees and what they were saying today about "those deadbeats" will turn into "God Bless the Sherriff's Department!" tomorrow.

 

[arminnie]

Actually it's better that the renters do know their homes are potentially being foreclosed on, instead of finding out about it after an auction, when they're really evicted.

I was renting a condo in Texas in the 80s when everything went bust. It was foreclosed on - but all that happened was that the bank sent a notice telling me to send rent to them not the previous owner.

In today's market it is better to have a solid renter paying monthly than for the place to just sit empty for months and months.