Foreclosure - Civil Lawyer Recommendation (short sale, rental, mortgage)

[dfwmia]

Help!

I need a good lawyer. I had a four-plex I owned with a partner foreclosed by Citi Mortgage in early 2012. I originally had a lawyer representing me when we stopped paying the mortgage but wasn't happy with him. He delegated most of the phone calls to his assistant. It wasn't terrible but throughout the process where we were jumping through hoops to get Citi everything they asked for to allow us to short sell the property (we had a buyer), I felt that his assistant was just parroting the info Citi gave to her.

I would ask her specifically, should we send this? Should we do this? She did recommend that we proceed but the lawyer was out of the loop unless I specifically called and demanded to talk to him.

This lawyer told me at the consult that in the worst case scenario if Citi sues for the balance owed, then he almost always negotiates 50 cents on the dollar. We owed 43k and I am not sure what Citi actually sold the property for. Our short sale offer was 15k which Citi obviously declined.

It's split between my partner and myself so even if they sold for 10k and we have 33k left that they want to come after us for, plus fees I'm sure, then I'm hoping to get a lawyer that can have each of us pay 10k apiece and be done with it.

Anybody familiar with this type of situation have any comments or more importantly, do you have a lawyer recommendation? Citi retained a local firm who has sent us a certified letter. We aren't going to pick up the letter until we talk to a lawyer first.

[harry chickpea]

All I can suggest is to contact a few rental agencies and find out who they use. A few years back, while I was in Florida, I had to engage an attorney to do a repossession and ran into much the same things that you are. When I did a "Deed in Lieu" last year, I was NOT pleased to find how much the assistant had messed up lot description, book numbers, and so on back during the repossession.