Thursday, May 1, 2008

What to do if headed for foreclosure

If you are experiencing foreclosure and wants to get out of foreclosure, there are some actions that you could do so that you could get out of foreclosure and among these are:

Inform your lender if you are going to miss a mortgage payment

If you know that you are going to miss the first payment on your mortgage, it is your responsibility to notify your lender or the bank where you obtained a mortgage loan so that your lender could explain to you the entire process and what to expect when you miss your first payment, the longer that you miss your payment there are other fees and costs that you have to consider if you are able to pay the missed mortgage payments.

Another reason why you should contact your lender immediately is for them to know the reason why you have missed your first mortgage payment, the reason could be that you lost your job or there was a medical emergency in your family or you have had suffered a financial setback or hardship, your lender could give you time until you regain your financial stability and be able to pay them.

Avail of the programs that the lending company offers or get help from other companies

There are also mortgage companies or programs that could help you get out of foreclosure and among these are Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other programs that your lender could provide you for you to get out of foreclosure. Fanni Mae is a share-holder owned company that will guarantee that the lenders will provide low housing rates for the borrowers.

Freddie Mac is a company that has a unique mortgage finance system that helps homeowners of America. A program that you could help you get out of foreclosure is the "Loss Mitigation Process" which was established by the American federal government to help Americans get out of foreclosure or entirely stop foreclosure.

Loss mitigation process have several options and among these are loan modification which means that the terms of the loan mortgage could be modified for the homeowner to get out of foreclosure, VA loan modification or refunding is the option wherein homeowner's loan is bought by the VA (Veterans Affairs), Short Payoff is the option wherein the lender may be able to buy the property from the borrower so that the borrower could get out of foreclosure, Deed-in-lieu of foreclosure is the option for those homeowners who needs to sell his or her house to stop foreclosure and his or her property has been on the market for three months or 90 days , a repayment plan is for those homeowners who are past due for two or more months in their payments, special forbearance is the division of repayment for 12 to 18 months and partial claim is the option where payments could be placed as a second mortgage between the homeowners and the Secretary of Housing Urban Development. Lenders provide several options for the borrowers to get out of foreclosure because it would be more costly for them if and when they foreclosed a home, another reason why they provide option for homeowners to get out of foreclosure is for good public relations.

If you are experiencing foreclosure and wants to get out of foreclosure, there are some actions that you could do so that you could get out of foreclosure and among these are:

Inform your lender if you are going to miss a mortgage payment

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joan_Castillo

Avoid Foreclosure 101

I probably don't need to waste your time talking about the record numbers of home foreclosures across the United States. If you've read a newspaper or watched the nightly news at all lately, you've heard all about it.

So instead of spending time on the back-story, let's get into the crux of this article. Let's talk about the ways that homeowners can avoid foreclosure in the first place. Specifically, let's discuss the real estate short sale and how it could help you avoid having your home foreclosed upon.

Let's start with a definition:

Short sale -- The sale of a home (by its owner) for less than the amount owed on the property.

The first question most people ask is this: "Why would somebody sell their home for less than market value? And for that matter, why would the lender be willing to accept less than what is owed by the homeowner?" These are good questions. So in order to understand the process at work here, we must tackle both questions in turn.

When homeowners can no longer afford the mortgage payments on a home, they face a possible foreclosure. The mortgage lender will foreclose on the home and sell it as quickly as they can. This usually happens at a real estate auction.

In many cases, however, the lender wants to avoid this process as much as the homeowner wants to avoid being foreclosed upon. The process can be expensive for lenders, because they have to pay an attorney, promote the property, auction it off, etc.

On top of that, many properties will not sell at the first auction, so the lending institution will have to take the home back, perform any necessary repairs, and hire an agent to market the home. Meanwhile, they still have that non-performing loan on their books!

For obvious reasons, the homeowner wants to avoid this entire process as well. For one thing, it can wreak havoc on your credit score. This makes it harder to get loans in the future. Also, the lenders losses could come back to haunt the homeowner.

One Way to Avoid All This

This is where the real estate short sale enters the picture. Through this process, the lender will often give the borrower a reasonable amount of time to sell the property prior to foreclosing on it, and they will often agree to accept less than what is owed on loan. Remember, a full-scale foreclosure can cost a lot for the lending institution, so it's usually in their interest to be flexible on the sale of the property.

In this regard, you can think of the short sale as the nearest thing to a win-win situation as possible, given the circumstances. The lender gets some of their money back and avoids further losses. The homeowner avoids foreclosure and the credit-damaging effects it can bring.

Brandon Cornett writes on behalf of DTR Realty, which provides short sale assistance to homeowners in Utah. Learn more about this topic by visiting http://www.dtrrealty.com