My life just keeps getting stranger
I am writing this here because I have no other place to get it all out, don't feel like you have to read it all.
So we are going through all sorts of financial issues right now so that is causing a lot of stress. We still own a home were we use to live and we rent where we are now. We are paying $500 per month for someone else to live in our house and we are trying to find daycare for 4 kids and falling so far behind. Last week we got a notice that the bank was looking for our landlord. I called the bank and discovered that he has not been paying his mortgage and is way behind. So we have been stressing having to move with being behind on our bills. As well as having everything we need for the baby and giving the boys Christmas. Anyway today I logged into the bank and there was a return on one of my rent checks from Oct. I am not really sure what that means. Is he no longer cashing our checks so that we have money to move? I really don't know for now I am just going to hang onto the money and wait. It is all just weird.
Erin
Re: My life just keeps getting stranger
This happened to us with a cottage we were renting 2 years ago. We lived in a cottage on a 3 house lot all owned by the same guy who owned several rental properties including ones that were worth millions of dollars. Long story short we were the front cottage facing the street so we got all the main mail delivered to the property, and there was several notices of pending foreclosure to the bank due to non payment of the mortgage. We tried contacting the property manager, who told us she was no longer dating the owner and didnt work for him anymore and she was the only one we had ever met, we never met the owner in person only the manager months prior. So we were advised to stop paying our rent because by him intentionally not paying the mortgage he was breaking the terms of our lease agreement. We canceled the rent check we had just mailed out and called and left him a message that we did so, he flipped out and said he was still the legal owner and we had to pay him still until the bank took over but that he no longer had our security deposit. we pretty much told him to go F himself and lived in the cottage for free for 2 months before the bank took over a month after we moved out. Of coarse we never saw our $1600 security deposit, but we didnt pay rent for 2 months so it evens out I guess. We didnt personally wait for the bank to take over the property, and neither did the tenants in the 2 cottages behind us we all left at different times and we were all kind of afraid the water bill was not being paid by the slum owner and could be shut off at any time.
We drove by a month later to a for sale sign from the bank in the lawn as they finally took the property back, so it took several months. If we had stayed until the back come they could have legally asked us for rent money and given us 30 days to vacate and they usually offer you compensation if you will move out earlier then that.
If I were you I would just stay in the house until somebody from the bank comes and tells you what the plan is, but I would start looking for a new place to rent in the meantime but there is not a huge rush realistically because this happens a lot especially now a a days it usually takes the bank a couple months for it to officially start to foreclose. If your rent check was returned it was probably due to the fact that the owners were collecting under the knowing fact that they were not going to pay the mortgage at all and if they are under a written agreement with you then you could turn around and sue them so that is most likely why the check was returned to you so you do not have grounds to sue them after the fact. Granted these laws depend by state, we live in California.