Stopping foreclosure can quickly become the only thing you seem to think about when you are faced with a sale date on your home. When you are facing foreclosure, you need to really get drastic in the types of options you will consider taking. There are not a lot of things that you wouldn’t give up to save your family member when they are suffering from serious health problems. The same goes for very few other things, but saving a home from foreclosure can almost be met in the same sentence as such important things in life like the health of your family members. Not only that, but the thing about a home is the importance of all the memories that you have built in that place. Granted, your home is literally going to be wherever you and your family are located and does not have to be tied directly and exclusively with one location, but the home and the house that you are trying to save is very important.

Our law firm focuses on helping clients who are facing serious repercussions from such things as getting behind on a mortgage. When people come to our law firm facing serious financial consequences from getting behind on vital bills like car payments and mortgages, we immediately jump into gear to determine whether we can successfully and reasonably help the client to save their car or home. A car is a unique beast compared to saving a home from foreclosure. While a car depreciates in value, a home generally could hold its value or increase in value as a piece of solid, tangible real estate. On the other hand, a car will have wear and tear that will cause it to go down in value over time while the home remains steady generally unless there are unusual circumstances such as the major decline of a city or downward pressure from surrounding bad neighborhoods.

Regardless, there are a number of reasons that a person can become seriously delinquent on a mortgage for their home. Some examples of reasons that are common for becoming late on a mortgage include but are not limited to the following:

  • Job-loss. Losing a job can be devastating. Not only is it a shot to your moral, but it can also cause very serious short and long term consequences. If you have been able to set money aside for a rainy day, then you will be able to weather a short term drop in your income but if you have not set aside massive amounts of money then you can quickly become late on your mortgage payments. If the path does not clearly turn towards one of getting back into the workplace, then you can face the dire circumstances of losing your home.
  • Medical Problems. When a person is diagnosed with a major illness or if they are injured in a serious accident, then they can quickly be put into a situation of double trouble. The reason is that not only will they be potentially building up major bills for medical treatment, but they will also be unable to work during the period of time that they are receiving treatment or healing from a major injury from a serious accident. When this happens, there are short term disability payments that may be available to you, and then there are even long term disability insurance plans which are wise to obtain, but these are often not enough to maintain the same level of bills for a household. For example, if you are only obtaining $1,500/month from short term disability for your illness, then you would be unlikely to be able to afford paying your $1,100/month mortgage. Soon your mortgage becomes later and later and you are faced with the horrible prospect of foreclosure or being forced to sell your home. If the market is not hot at that exact moment, then you would likely be forced to sell your home at a loss or at least be forced to sell it for a price which would otherwise not be your best option. Furthermore, if you are unable to sell the home or there would not be enough equity to sell the home and cover even the Realtor fees, then you would be facing options like foreclosure, short sale, or some other thing to catch the home up.
  • Under Employment. Similar to job-loss, under-employment happens when an employer forces their employees to do furloughs or other slow downs or cuts overtime hours and takes other cost-cutting measures in order to keep the business from going under. When this happens, the employees who rely heavily on the overtime hours or at least the ones who rely upon having a steady “full-time” and not a “part-time” job will suffer immensely. Your mortgage company may offer some kind of a hardship program which allows you to be given some time briefly to catch up your payments but if you are unable to get back into a heavier income soon, you could be forced into foreclosure out of a lack of the ability to do catch-up payments to get the mortgage caught up.

Facing foreclosure? Here Are Some Options

When you are facing foreclosure, there are a few things that you should likely do in order to ascertain what your options are and what kind of programs or options are available to you. First, you should contact your mortgage company in order to obtain the dollar amount of a reinstatement quote. If you are facing foreclosure then you would likely want to find out what exactly is the dollar amount that the mortgage company will require in order to stop the sale and let you remain in your home and retain the mortgage on an ongoing basis. This figure often takes 3 days for the mortgage company to get for you, so you should contact them as soon as possible in order to get the figure fast as you may be severely limited on time and it would be wise not to waste any time at this juncture.

Next, you should contact the mortgage company and find out whether there is a realistic opportunity for a mortgage modification. If you are facing foreclosure and have not done a modification on your home previously, you may qualify for certain options which would allow you to lower your mortgage payment and help you do catch up payments to save your home.

Additionally, you may want to consider bankruptcy as a means to stopping the sale and retaining your home. The benefit of a bankruptcy to stop foreclosure comes in its ability to give you 36 to 60 months to get your home caught up. Instead of being forced to sell the home or to catch up the mortgage arrearages over a period of 12 months, instead you will be given 3-5 years in which you can make payments to a bankruptcy trustee in order to catch up the past due portion of the mortgage. These options are worked out in a way that the mortgage company is forced to accept the payments and can no longer send your partial payments back. You will be able to save your home through this method if you can make the trustee payments and resume the regular mortgage payments monthly. However, there are issues that come up when filing a chapter 13 bankruptcy and so you will want to consult with McKinney bankruptcy lawyers to review your options and make sure you are not overlooking some problem that would prevent you from using bankruptcy to adequately protect your home.