Foreclosure from a Hurricane

In 2008, Hurricane Ike hit My home in Seabrook, Texas, and the storm surge pounded my one story home with five feet of water.  We lost everything except the photo albums I evacuated with and a small bag of clothes per kid. I had 4 kids at the time, including a baby. 

When Houston was hit by Hurricane Harvey 10 years later and thousands were flooded, I knew exactly what they were going through. 

But in 2008, Hurricane Ike did not devastate the entire city.  It was very limited in its destruction, but my house was ground zero. So we flooded. And we had flood insurance. Except for some reason our contents coverage was only $10,000. Our insurance agent said if we had our house burn down, we had over $100k in contents coverage, but for a flood, it was only $10k. Ok, so I guess when you are buying a house and signing a bunch of papers including your insurance coverages, it might be easy to miss something like this. I guess my insurance agent didn’t think he should mention that very important detail that really mattered after this natural disaster. So my entire life had to be replaced with $10,000. Let’s just say the appliances and second hand furniture took most of that. 

Luckily the flood insurance did pay for repairing the house, which had to be taken down to the studs. So we repaired it. And since we had to live in a hotel for a couple months and then in a rental house, we couldn’t afford the mortgage payments too. My husband and I were both out of work for about a month due to the Hurricane shutting everything down. 

I tried to work things out with the lender. We put the newly fixed house on the market. But the taxing authority had cut the value in half for all the homes in our area. So on paper it looked bad. The lender would not accept a short sale. Face it, no one was buying either. Windstorm and homeowner policies were likely to rise and buyers were not eager to buy in areas with FEMA trailers rolling in, some homes getting demolished and others being lifted. It was also early 2009, and the middle of the mortgage lending crisis. So we were foreclosed on. It hurt, my pride, my credit, my future. 

I am proud to say that this tragedy did make my family stronger. Ten years later you would never know. We have another home, another child, bringing our family size to five kids and 2 adults. We are active members of our community and the real estate business is thriving despite Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Ike.

There are many lenders that can work with your unique situations, even if there was a foreclosure in your past. And lesson learned, always check your contents coverage.