Property no longer worth what's owed

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Texas

I bought a property about 8 years ago. I married, had children and occupied that home until the end of July, 2009 (my husband is not on the title or the mortgage). We moved about an hour away, putting my husband closer to his work and our children in a better school district. My husband purchased a foreclosure; I am on neither the mortgage or the title.

Over the past year, we repaired/renovated my property. It was beautiful when completed and we put it on the market around the end of September/early October. My husband and I could only afford to float two mortgages for about 5-6 months, but we were confident it would sell (our first offer came in two days after it was put on the market). If it went into foreclosure, frankly, I wouldn't have felt too badly about it (the bank would be getting a property worth a lot more than I owed and it would've free'd us up to start working on our current house).

The house suffered catastrophic damage at the end of December due to the freeze. My insurance company said they would not be covering the damage (they said it was a matter of "verbage" in our policy). I had a lawyer that specialized in insurance confirm this for me.

I paid the mortgage last month, but now we have come to the end of our financial buffer zone. I can no longer make mortgage payments on the house. -And now it is destroyed. I have NO idea what to do.What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

Please answer this question: Did the house freeze up because you vacated it and failed to winterize it first?

The house was vacant, but was winterized as well. The power and water were left on for inspections to take place. However, my husband went down a few days before our big freeze and turned off the water locally. The pipes were newly insulated on the exposed piping outside of the house. He opened up cabinets, etc. according to several websites he found about winterizing vacant houses.

jubo said:

The house was vacant, but was winterized as well. The power and water were left on for inspections to take place. However, my husband went down a few days before our big freeze and turned off the water locally. The pipes were newly insulated on the exposed piping outside of the house. He opened up cabinets, etc. according to several websites he found about winterizing vacant houses.

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Ouch, it probably would have been better to leave the water on and running. If he just shut the pipes off and didn't drain the pipes...well, it did get cold. Our pipes nearly froze and we had the water running hard (our H20 bill was 4x normal). Still, I have a hard time picturing "catastrophic damage" if the water was off.

Have you had an estimate to repair the damage?

The draining the pipes part is REALLY important.

Yes catastrophic damage seems unreasonable and hard to imagine as above poster stated. Coming from a cold state most of my adult life, even if the pipes freeze up it was never catastrophic, maybe a few pipes have to be resoldered and if the water was turned off = no flood and ice skating rink senario.

Get bids to repair immediately, it may not be as bad as your insurance adjuster would like to believe, even if they are protected because you did not follow the verbage in the insurance agreement.

You could eat the cost or reduce the asking price of the house to offset the expense, beats having it turned back over to bank for forclosure. You have some options. Sell fast and move on.