What's more valuable to a die-hard Harley Davidson owner: the bike or financial ruin. Some "hog" owners will put their bikes above all else. Imagine yourself in the shoes of these fictional characters.
A married couple was undergoing a divorce, and so, they decided to sell their home.
Their goal was to pay off the loan and walk away with some profit. So, they priced the home about 10% higher than the rest of the market. And the home sat there. In the meantime, prices were plummeting. Their listing agent continually asked for a price reduction. Eventually, they agreed to reduce the asking price. By so doing, they again reached the point where they were still 10% above market price. And the home sat there, with no offers. A few more months passed, and they finally reduced the asking price to market. They received an offer. However, this offer put them upside-down on their mortgage by about $20,000.
The husband and the wife each owned a Harley Davidson motorcycle, which were custom chromed to the max, each worth between $12,000 and $16,000. They faced a simple choice: sell the motorcycles, sell the house at market price and pay off the mortgage completely, or try to sell the house as a short sale. They chose to keep the motorcycles and go for a short sale. Even though they only rode the motorcycles 2 or 3 times a year, they treasured them. They were a symbol of their freedom and their maverick independence. There was no way they would give them up, even realizing that, since they were moving in to separate apartments, neither of them would have a garage for the bikes, and both of them were going to have to ask friends to store them in their garages.
A month after the listing agent submitted the offer to the lender for approval, the offer was rejected by the lender. In the meantime, the market continued its downward trend.
The listing agent submitted several more offers to the lender, and after a year on the market, the lender finally approved the short sale. The amount by this time was more than $50,000 less than the amount of the loan.
What’s more important to you? Keeping your wheels or maintaining your credit rating?
-Blog End-
Note: This story is fictional. Any resemblance between the characters in this story and anyone in real life is a coincidence.
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Interesting story. Not to sound materialistic, but once someone gets a motorcycle, or car paid in full, it's tough to let them go. Unless you file for BK, there's no way that the creditors can take them away from you. Now a car or motorcycle that's leased our still has a balance, I can see letting them go.