Mortgage Relief Analysis
Have you missed a mortgage payment? Are you confused with how to exit forbearance? Struggling with your housing payment but unable to refinance your mortgage?
If so, you’re likely at the beginning stages of evaluating your options for mortgage relief.
Have you tried calling your lender to see what they have to say? If so, they likely told you that if you’re “experiencing financial hardship” you should “fill out a loss mitigation application” but that’s about all the information they give you.
After speaking with a mortgage servicer about relief options you can be left with these questions:
- What am I filling out an application for?
- Does this application stop foreclosure activity?
- Will this application reduce my payment to an affordable amount?
- If I fill out this application, is it guaranteed to save my home?
- Can the bank still come at any point and just take my home?
If this is your situation it would be smart to speak with a mortgage relief attorney to get your questions answered.
How I Can Help You With Mortgage Relief
As part of my practice I regularly talk to people like yourself, who are in financial distress. The first step is to hold a free consultation, where we’ll discuss the following things:
- What is your financial situation? I want to know what has happened to you and to your household. I want to know what hardships you’ve gone through and how they have affected your household income.
- What has happened with your bank so far? I want to know what you’ve been going through in dealing with them, the challenges you’ve faced and what they’re telling you.
- Where are you at on the foreclosure timeline? We need to know exactly how much time you have to fix the problem and what is coming next.
Once we discuss the above, I will ask you the following question:
“In an ideal world – do you want to try and save the home or try and get out of it?”
From here, we make a mortgage relief plan and discuss your possibilities for mortgage relief.
Option One
Saving the Home
- Save the home via a loan modification or repayment plan: Get a new agreement with your bank so you can resume your regular payments without having to pay the full amount you owe.
- Use mediation to stop the foreclosure and negotiate home retention: File for mediation to stop the foreclosure. Determine what option(s) you’d like to explore with your bank. Speak directly with your bank about options and solutions afforded to you under the Foreclosure Fairness Act.
- Save the home with a forbearance plan: See if your bank has a short-term forbearance option that can help you get your mortgage caught up.
- Save the home with reinstatement assistance: Determine how much you owe, where to send the reinstatement funds, and ensure the funds are applied correctly and the foreclosure activity is stopped.
Option Two
Getting Out of the Home
- Complete a Short Sale: Sell your underwater property and settle remaining debt owed so you can get out of a bad investment.
- Complete a Distressed Equity Sale: Sell your home at full market value, securing your equity and walking away with funds to start fresh.
- Complete a Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure or “Cash for Keys Agreement”: Give your property back to the bank in exchange for them ending the foreclosure activity.
Option Three
Buying Time and then Transitioning out of the Home
Use the different processes, rights and loss mitigation programs available to you to maximize your time in the home and then transition out of the home prior to foreclosure on a timeline that works for you.
Option Four
Litigation and/or Bankruptcy
Sometimes, my practice area won’t be the best fit for you and you may need a foreclosure litigator or a bankruptcy attorney. If this is the case, we will talk briefly about these options and then I will provide you a referral to a reputable attorney who is better suited for your situation.
Other topics that we can talk about when we make your plan
- Your best and worst case scenarios
- Your fastest resolution option
- The timeline required for a multiple option strategy
- Your last resort options
If it’s realistic for you to try and achieve your first choice goal, I lay out how we can try to do that. If it’s not, we talk about why it’s not realistic and what is realistic as a foreclosure prevention plan.
Sometimes, we come up with a plan that involves trying something first and then moving to a back-up option if our first choice doesn’t work.
The bottom line is that you have options. Unfortunately, your lender won’t tell you all of them. They are simply a debt collector and aren’t in the business of making it easy on you. Therefore, speaking to an experienced mortgage relief attorney is your first step. Give me a call and we can discuss what a mortgage relief plan looks like for you.
If you’d like to set up a time to talk about your situation, please give me a call at (425) 654-1674.
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