I just received this from someone who benefitted from our You Tube Channel:
Wow. Love this.
Lots of folks bought second properties with a plan to do short term rentals through Airbnb or VRO — and now occupancy rates are dwindling, maintenance expenses are increasing, consumer disposable income is declining, and interest rates continue to soar. While not yet an Airbnb bust, it is not the easy market it was back in 2020 and 2021. Bloomberg covers some of the problems in its story this week Airbnb Hosting Isn’t What It Used to Be.
So far Florida’s short term rental market hasn’t been impacted all that much – despite the heat this summer. But if the trends don’t reverse soon, many homebuyers will need to make some hard choices to get out from under the debt in a way that creates as much value as possible and with an intact balance sheet and credit report, before the decision may be made for them.
If this is you and you need help making a plan forward, please reach out to us. Our practice areas make us uniquely able to find solutions – and the earlier the better in our opinion. If times get tougher, it’s best to be one of the first out the door as opposed to getting trampled later.
The new IDR account adjustment going on right now may require that you consolidate your FFEL loans to Direct. You may also want to consolidate differently dated Direct loans to one consolidation that will re-date all the loans to the earliest repayment date so you get as much credit toward your income driven plan forgiveness as possible. This is particularly important for anyone who bifurcated their education and had a gap – no matter how small – between degrees.
There is much more information online and at your fingertips than you may believe.
You need to login to studentaid.gov & download your TXT file covering all of your federal loans. Each loan is listed and for FFEL loans, the Servicer, Lender & Guarantor are listed so you can tell if FFEL is owned by ED or not. FFEL loans owed by ED are covered by the IDR waiver/account adjustment. Generally though, if you have a FFEL loan with anyone, including the Department of Education, it usually is best to change it to Direct for multiple reasons such as PSLF, SAVE etc. There can be reasons not to though – and we’d recommend a strategy session with us where we can go over whether you should consolidate, how to do it, and often be by your side talking you through it.
Pish posh on the 10k forgiveness the Supreme Court recently denied. This is SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT! And a lawsuit was filed yesterday by the New Civil Liberties Alliance on behalf of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Cato Institute in an effort to block it. So take action now!!! We are designating extra time over the next few weeks to make sure we are available to walk you through a consolidation and answer any questions you have. This is expected to result in $39 billion in federal student loan forgiveness to more than 800,000 borrowers. Don’t delay. The litigants have already requested a temporary restraining order to put a hold on things. I suspect that if someone gets a consolidation application in (online can take five minutes) before a TRO order is entered, they would still be counted for forgiveness (but that’s above my paygrade so we don’t really know). Forgiveness that occurs under the recount will also be tax free as it will occur before the end of 2025.
IDR one time account adjustment:
For many years, student loan servicers steered struggling borrowers into forbearance instead of guiding them toward income driven repayment. Income driven payment generally caps payments at no more than 10 percent of income, and ultimately leads to loan forgiveness after 20 or 25 years of repayment. Many of these loan servicers also failed to accurately track borrowers’ progress toward forgiveness. Some of these companies had no system for tracking payments and identifying when borrowers would qualify for forgiveness.
The Navient settlement today reflects a broad shift in the understanding of higher education debts that can be summarily discharged in bankruptcy.
The case is Homaidan v. Sallie Mae Inc., Bankr. E.D.N.Y., No. 17-01085, motion filed 7/21/23.
If you are considering bankruptcy to fix your finances, make sure to get your student loans taken care of also. We do both, and if you’d like to set up a strategy session to discuss your specific situation (credit card debt, house, student loans, income and assets) and understand your options (and you’re in the Tampa area or its surrounding counties), please see the link below. We freely discuss any options you can take advantage of if bankruptcy is not a good option as well.
Need new hurricane windows, roof, exterior door or garage door upgrades, roof decks, reinforcement of roof to wall connections? – check out this 10k grant below, opened up with new funding on July 1 for Florida homeowners. It’ll match $2 for every $1 you spend. No state tax on several items for 12 months. Don’t wait to apply, more applications being filed every day.
Requirements:
I was reading about Solomon’s Paradox today: We’re better at solving other people’s problems than our own, because detachment yields objectivity.” So true. I enjoy solving a client’s problem, will do multiple rounds of negotiation, think outside the box for unusual solutions etc. But when faced with buying a new truck, I recently told my husband that I’d rather get a root canal. These things are fun when done for others, but simply work when done for yourself.
Then I saw Kross’s update in 2014 who stated “viewing oneself in the 3rd person yields the same detachment, so when trying to help yourself, imagine you’re helping a friend.”
I often will say in consults that if someone were a member of my family, I’d recommend…. Good approach for our law firm to take, as well as for personal matters.
We received this inquiry today from a fellow bankruptcy attorney:
I have a client who had a Chapter 13, which due to it being a 100% plan, ended off paying off the Proof of Claim Amount at 100% in the bankruptcy.
Years later, (Insert Private Student Loan Company Here) is coming back after her arguing that during the bankruptcy, interest continued to accrue, and now she owes $3,700 in interest. In the Chapter 13 Trustee’s Final Account they paid the POC principal PLUS interest.
The FHA Covid-19 Forbearances allow for reduced or suspended payments without specific terms of repayment, for six months at a time, up to 18 months. Deadline for applications was May 11, 2023. The end of the health emergency is now over. If you’ve lost your income, job change or divorce for instance, you may have qualified for this relief.
A FHA Covid-19 Modification is called Advance Loan Modification. If a mortgage loan is in forbearance, the review will occur within 30 days of forbearance ending. For those mortgage loans are not in forbearance, if the loan is 90 plus days delinquent it must be reviewed for a modification offer on or before 10/30/2024. This is still in effect!
January 2023 new guidelines: a substantial change is that the guidance now applies for non-occupied borrowers. Some other notes:
Reboot Your Life: Tampa Student Loan and Bankruptcy Attorney Blog