Foreclosure at the courthouse steps
It was apparently a wild Tuesday at the Charleston County Courthouse for the weekly foreclosure sale with a couple of Habitat for Humanity homes selling and getting a lot of media coverage. The two homes actually sold for quite a bit more than owed and Habitat will have additional funds to buy more land and build more homes so that is good news.
Most interesting was the home in Mount Pleasant selling for a little more than $600,000 with only $350,000 owed. It seems the house has been listed for sale for about 2 years and the sellers wouldn't budge on their asking price and never dropped their list price below $900,000. For whatever reason, they were not able to make their mortgage payments, the house went into foreclosure, their credit is likely ruined for the foreseeable future and they don't get a penny from the sale of their house.
A lesson from the courthouse steps. Don't be a stubborn seller. If you're in trouble financially, figure out how to avoid losing your home and price it to sell for what the market value is and in this case, they might have left the closing with at least $250,000 and likely even more had the home been priced right from the start.
It's better than nothing.