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Are you facing foreclosure?
A bankruptcy filing may be able to help you.
Foreclosure proceedings begin when you fall too far behind on your mortgage payments.
The main thing we would like to know when someone wants to save their house is whether or not they would be able to afford to make their payments if they were completely up-to-date.
If so, a Chapter 13 bankruptcy could help you save your home and keep you from having to find a new place to live.
Foreclosure involves a long and arduous process that can take months before it is finalized.
We are mostly concerned about one date...the Sheriff's sale. We can help you save your home up until that date, so please do not hesitate to consult attorney because it could mean the
difference between keeping your home and ending up somewhere else.
Bankruptcy works. Even if you are thousands of dollars behind on your payments, the Chapter 13 allows you
to spread out the amount that you are behind over five years. This means that you only end up paying a very small percentage of that total every month and as far as your lender is
concerned, the loan becomes current once again.
What exactly is foreclosure? When you buy a house, you end up signing a lot of documents when the final sale goes through.
Two of those documents include the Note and the Mortgage. The Note is an agreement that you promise to pay back your lender for the money you borrowed to pay for the house.
The Mortgage is where you agree to allow your lender to put a lien on your real property and use is as collateral for the actual loan. Foreclosure is basically just the court
proceeding that allows your mortgage lender to sell your home. As with repossessions, when the property is sold, the amount it is sold for is deducted from what you agreed to
pay for the house, and you are then responsible for the remaining balance.
If you are concerned about the prospects of foreclosure, it may help to know exactly what happens when these proceedings start. Usually a mortgage lender will start the proceedings after consecutive missed payments, usually about three months worth, on your mortgage.
They will attempt to call and write to you to collect those missed payments, and if they begin to believe that you cannot or will not pay your mortgage, they will consult an attorney.
The attorney then will try to collect the back payments from you. If you do not get current, then what usually happens next is the attorney will exercise the mortgage lender's
right to "accelerate" your mortgage. This is when the process really starts to become scary because suddenly you are going to be asked to pay your mortgage in full.
It might even happen that you try to make partial payments to improve your standing with your lender, but they will actually send these payments right back to you.
This is usually when you can start to expect the legal documents. The first is what is called the Summons and Complaint. This means that your lender has officially started
foreclosure proceedings with the Court. There are only a few ways to stop things from going further at this point because the lender is really only expected to show proof
that you are behind on your payments and this is obviously not difficult for them to do. The court proceedings then lead to the Sheriff's sale, which is where your
house is sold at a public auction where anybody can bid on your property. The highest bidder gets your property. Then, once the sale is final, the highest bidder owns
your property and you have lost your home. You will have to physically vacate the property pretty much immediately. If you do not, the Sheriff could come,
throwing you and your belongings out into the street.
In most cases, houses sell for much less than what is owed at that public auction...much, much less.
You are still responsible for that remaining debt. The lender does have the right to sue you for that debt, which could then result in a direct deduction from your paychecks.
If you have already lost your home to foreclosure and you are left with a "mortgage deficiency," there are stil options with bankruptcy. If you decide to file, it is a real
possibility to wipe that debt out completely.
If you are facing foreclosure, you do not want to wait to get help. The further you let the process carry on, your options
begin to become less and less. You need to address the problem right away so that you can truly understand what you need to do next. Even if you do decide to let
your house go and proceed with a bankruptcy filing, but you don't have anywhere else to go, it could buy you some more time to stay in your house while you figure
out your next step. Bankruptcy proceedings give you time by slowing down the process and allowing you to stay right where you are so that you have the opportunity to
figure out where you're going to live.
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