Thursday 18 July 2013

How I Saved My Home From Foreclosure

Last year my family and I were met with some serious decisions. I had been laid off the year prior and was on unemployment. My wife was a school teacher, but her salary combined with the money I was getting through unemployment was not enough to keep up with the mortgage payments on top of utilities, food, and clothing for my children. I didn’t want to see my children dressed like characters out of “Oliver”, so I went to my mortgage lender and began explaining the hardship which we were under and how it was going to be near impossible to keep up with the payments. Their advisor introduced me to a number of options to stop foreclosure. Not all of these options are available per lender.
  • Special Forbearance is a written agreement between you and your lender on a repayment plan for the money you owe. There will also be a plan to eventually reinstate the loan after it’s been delinquent for a minimum of 90 days.
  • Mortgage modifications are sometimes offered by the lender as a means to change the structure of an existing loan to make it easier to pay. Often with assistance through the governments HAMP program a mortgage can change to make monthly payments lower or even the overall principal!
  • Sometimes a lender will allow you to sell prior to foreclosure and pay off most of the remaining loan but not all of it. This saves you money and doesn’t necessarily hurt your credit score.
  • Deed in lieu of foreclosure is a last resort. You might be able to give your property back to the mortgage company. It doesn’t save your home, but it helps your chances of getting another mortgage loan in the future.
Getting to know your debt to income ratio

There were other options laid out before me on that table that afternoon, and most of them came from the programs available through HUD. I wasn’t anywhere close to giving my house up at this point, but life had gotten hard for all of us and I knew that if my lender didn’t agree to make changes I would eventually lose my home to foreclosure. The Homes Affordable Modification Program was started in 2009 as an attempt to stabilize the housing market. The program itself encompasses a wide ranging demographic as there is a system in place designed to help families of all income levels. The main thing you absolutely have to prove is sudden and unexpected financial hardship.

A Letter of Hardship

I spent the next evening sitting down with my wife and going over out debt to income ratio. All of our utilities were added up, any medical expenses, money owed for other loans, car payments etc. Then we designed a “letter of hardship” which your lender will require in order to even consider refinancing to stop foreclosure. In this letter we went to every length to provide evidence that all we could afford was food, clothing, and shelter. With this detailed letter of our debt to income ratio we worked with our lender to stop the mortgage foreclosure.

I couldn't have done all this had I not found advice through www.real-estate-yogi.com on how to stop the foreclosure process. They worked with me step by step to save my home. Visit their website today or call them directly any time at 1-800-987-1397.

Friday 5 July 2013

Stop Foreclosure: Get The Help You Need!!

How many of you have faced the terrifying prospect of losing your home to foreclosure? I have, too, and I want to share how I got through the fear and kept my home. There’s an absolutely amazing website called Real-estate-yogi.com that is full of ideas and insight about how to stop foreclosure fast, and it was a huge help to me when I didn’t think there was any way I could stop the foreclosure process. Read on to find out how much help I got just from this one website.


As soon as I got the Notice of Default, I remember thinking “I have to stop foreclosure now,” but I wasn’t sure how to do it. Real-estate-yogi.com gave me several suggestions about halting this process, one of which was to go talk to my lender to see if we could come to an agreement that would stop the foreclosure right then. Another was to look into HAMP to help me. HAMP means Home Affordable Modification Program and it was developed by the Obama Administration to help struggling homeowners. HAMP is a loan modification program, meaning that, if I qualified, some changes would be made to my mortgage loan that would result in a lower payment each month. Thank goodness, I did qualify, so that’s the option I chose to help me avoid foreclosure on my home.

If you need to stop a foreclosure today, you may want to consider filing for bankruptcy. I know, I know… no one in their right mind wants to take this step, but it’s the only way to stop a foreclosure process instantly. When you file for bankruptcy, an automatic stay goes into effect, preventing creditors from coming after you for what you owe them. Keep in mind that this is a stopgap action; it will not save your home in the long run unless you file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which doesn’t guarantee keeping your home.

I wondered if I could stop foreclosure for free, and it turns out that it is possible to do so. You can get all sorts of free advice about averting the process from Real-estat-yogi.com, from HUD, and from the FHA, and if you qualify for HAMP, you don’t have to put money down prior to getting your modified mortgage. With an FHA Streamline mortgage refinance, you may have to pay some loan-related fees, but that should be all.  Some qualifications for HAMP include having obtained your mortgage on or before January 31, 2009 and being able to prove a financial hardship.

I found Real-Estate-Yogi.com to be an informative, helpful website that provided me with excellent, current guidance which resulted in my keeping my home. If you’re facing foreclosure, don’t wait – contact this terrific website at 1-800-987-1397 and get the information you need to remain in your home.