7 Sure Fire Ways to Beat the Foreclosure process and Save Face

Most people that are facing foreclosure can get easily overwhelmed and feel like nothing can be done to salvage the situation. Millions of families have been in the same boat as you over the past few years. Some people have done nothing, and lost their house. Some families have fought to the bitter end and won. You can work through foreclosure, but you are going to have to do some heavy lifting, or have a professional do the heavy lifting for you.

There are a range of options that are available today that weren’t available a few years back. Today, we will go over a few of these options, and we will dial into more in depth solutions in the following posts.

The first thing you MUST do is SOMETHING. That may sound weird to you, but there are people who go into “foreclosure” avoidance mode and wind up losing their house when other options were available to them.

Foreclosure Options:

1. Sell Your House
If you have equity, and time, the best thing to do might be to go a traditional route and hire a professional real estate agent that specializes in distressed property. There is a company that specializes in helping people Sell Their House Fast

2. Short Sale Your House
If you are upside down on your mortgage, meaning you owe more than the home is worth, one avenue to explore is having a short sale on your house. A short sale is when you get the mortgage holder to accept less than the stated mortgage. To get this facilitated, reach out to a local short sale expert. In the next few weeks, we will introduce some of the top short sale experts in the country to you.

3. Apply for a Loan Modification Program
A load modification is when the mortgage holder modifies the original terms of the mortgage note. Sometimes the mortgage holder will reduce the monthly payments temporarily to help you if this is a short term trouble spot for you. The note holder might adjust your APR (annual percentage rate), this will reduce your monthly payments.

Another type of modification is when the mortgage holder takes all of the payments that you are behind and parks it on the back of the mortgage. This is a grace period and the back payments will still have to be made. Loan Modifications can come in all shapes and sizes, and we will explore these in depth as the weeks go on.

4.Offer your Bank a Deed In Lieu of Foreclosure
What this basically means is that you give the keys and all interest in the property back to the bank. This was once a popular tactic used by the banks because most homes in foreclosure a few years back had equity built in. The banks would sell the home and keep the profit. Today, less and less banks will accept a deed in lieu.

5. PICK UP THE DANG phone and call your mortgage company. Explain your situation, and ask them what special options they have for you. Banks DO NOT want to take your home via the foreclosure process. You will find a much more responsive loan officer on the phone today than you would have 3-4 years ago.

6. You can file bankruptcy
There are different types of bankruptcy and every state has different laws on the books. We will have state and national specialists post the various pros and cons of bankruptcy.

7. Strategic Default

When all else fails, and you have tried to sell your house, work with the bank, and do everything else you can, strategic default is always an option, although it is one the we would only recommend to a slight fraction of the homeowners facing foreclosure.

Our next series of posts will be on short sales, the process of short sales, and how to find a short sale expert near you.