Mortgage Help

She wasn’t an investor. She didn’t have a subprime mortgage. But when Jordan Fogal’s house became uninhabitable, the 62-year-old grandmother says foreclosure became her best alternative.

Fogal’s troubles began when she and her 72-year-old husband, Bob, moved to a new housing development near Houston in 2002. That first night in the new house, the dining room ceiling collapsed. Bob had pulled the plug in the Jacuzzi tub upstairs, and 100 gallons of water came crashing through the ceiling downstairs because the plumbing drains were not connected.

“That was a preview of coming attractions,” Fogal says. Later, the roof and windows leaked, the yard flooded, the shower walls started bowing out, the floor in the kitchen started sinking, and mold began to grow all over the house. The smell was terrible, she recalls, and eventually Fogal’s doctor ordered her to leave the house because of the dangerous mold levels. A construction company hired by the Fogals estimated that it would take $150,000 to repair everything. “I could afford my mortgage payment, but I couldn’t afford $150,000 in repairs,” says Fogal, who had a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at the time. The home — appraised at $408,000 the day the couple bought it — ended up selling for $234,000 at a foreclosure auction.

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