Joann Gardner admits to feeling overwhelmed. Along with providing care each day for her elderly parents and 4-year-old great-niece, she worries about losing the family home. “I don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to happen,” she said.
Gardner, an outgoing woman with a warm demeanor, seems increasingly deflated as the drama plays itself out. The tidy bungalow in Oakland’s Sobrante Park neighborhood came to the brink of foreclosure twice this summer.
Both times, the courthouse auction was postponed at the last minute as a real estate agent tried to negotiate a “short sale” (selling for less than is owed on the mortgage) with the lender.
The Gardners hope to sell the house to an investor who would rent it back to them. At one point an investor seemed poised to buy it, but the deal fell through. Then the mortgage was transferred to a new servicing company, which has not taken the legal steps to initiate foreclosure.