Hello all, I am in a desperate bind and need some advice from some experts and I need that help quickly. Let me give you some background. I am a 50% partner in an LLC that is buying a 12 unit building using 1031 exchange money. The original buildings bought for the 1031 exchange were in my partner's name but we made a mistake and sold them using the LLC, hence, the 1031 exchange must buy the new building in the LLC name. This, of course, means that both of our credits are pulled and a condition of funding is that all derogs on my credit must be paid. I am upset about this, this was not something I planned and only found out about it a few days ago. So this leaves me in my current bind. Back at the start of 2000 I left the country for 3 years and left behind some debt. Obviously, a bad choice but I was broke at that time and had no other choice. Now I am back in the US and after working on my credit for the last year, I have the following derogs still showing: AMEX $8646 (CHARGE OFF) (TU/XP/EF) ARROW FINANCIAAL (Assignee of Dell) $4583 (XP) FMCC (Ford Credit - Turned in a Leased Vehicle early) $2670 (TU/XP/EF) EVERGREEN PRO RECOVERY (CTI Long Distance) $365 (EF) AFNI (Dish Network) $119 (XP/EF) MBNA AMERICA $0 (CHARGED OFF $4873) (TU/XP) Now, the time when i stopped making payment sfor all these above was about 11/99. I have been working on my file and as you can see above, some of these derogs only appear on one or 2 bureaus. Of course, the lender wants all of these paid before funding, which is supposedly this week. So I am desperate for advice. As I understand it, at the start of 2007 (7 years from stopped payment dates) all of these can be removed. If I pay them all now I believe that they will refresh for 7 years from today's date and continue to hurt my credit until 2011. Is this correct? Some more questions: 1) Is there a way for me to pay them off and have the creditor remove the entry entirely from my report? ie, Instead of showing a paid Derog show nothing at all? How do I make that happen? 2) Will creditors accept a partial payment and satisfy the balance? ie, will they take $50c on the dollar? Is this negotiable? What should I offer? If you have any other advice for me, I would greatly appreciate it. As it stands now, I am looking at having to fork out $20K just to satisfy the loan funding conditions. If we were to walk away from the deal, we would lose our $27K deposit and lose the tax benefits of the 1031 exchange so the situation is not good for me. Thank you so much in advance for your help!
I had wondered if they were past the SOL, but I suspect that the fact you were out of the country means the SOL was suspended. Normally I'd say make them validate, but you probably don't have time for that. You can negotiate for a settlement of a lower amount, with them marking it as settled in full. How much you can negotiate is up to each creditor. But DON'T let them know you're desperate--they'll hold out for more. Tell them you have been out of the country and now that you're back you'd like to settle what you owe. There may be an alternative. If you have enough money to pay them, just talk to the mortgage company (or whoever is requiring they be paid) and say that you aren't sure that these are correct. Tell them you're willing to put the amount of money required to pay them into escrow, and when you settle the amounts you'll have it paid from escrow or if it's incorrect you'll provide proof it's been removed and they can give you the rest of your money back.
