The United States Stop Foreclosure Blog

Please relize that I am not an attorney.  However I was talking to an attorney at a foreclosure seminar I just got back from.  He tells me that if someone is in foreclosure they can actually go and file the motion to start chapter 13 bankruptcy in there local bankruptcy court themselves for something like $60.00.  The first time they do this they will get an automatic stay off the foreclosure for atleast thirty days.  Usually the common pleas court system (atleast in Cleveland) is so backed up that that it will take 3 to 12 months to get it back in the system and on the auction block again.  The important part is that they withdraw their filing before 30 days is up.  This allows them to file bankruptcy again at a later time and keeps them from facing some other issues as well.  Also apparently if you cancel it before you finalize the bankruptcy it won’t go on your credit report.   Any attorneys out there that want to post and clarify on this?  Try googling “diy bankruptcy kits” or something like that and find some one that provides software and or forms for to assist you in doing this and of course consider getting advice from a licensed attorney.

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I do not condone all of these activities for all instances. But by using these strategies you may be able to slow the sherif

1. Chapter 7 bankruptcy – This bankruptcy dissolves all debt and absolves you of the responsibility to pay it. It will temporarily delay foreclosure while the U.S. Bankruptcy Court works out the details. Usually it will buy 45 to 75 days.

2. Chapter 13 bankruptcy – This bankruptcy reorganizes your debt and creates a payment plan. Recent law changes mean that more people will be forced to file this type of bankruptcy. If you were to simply file this bankruptcy but never make the payments it still may buy you as much as 45 to 75 days. If you make payments according to the plan and properly include your mortgage debt in the bankruptcy you should be able to permanently stop foreclosure. * Warning *- If you want to use this method to permanently stay out of foreclosure, make sure you do not make your chapter 13 payment even one day late. In my experience, banks restart the foreclosure process and refuse to accept any kind of catch up money or anything to stop the foreclosure process when borrowers defaulted on a chapter 13 plan.

3. File a written answer in the court system asking for time as soon as you get your notice of legal action. This could easily buy 30 days or more.

4. Challenge the sheriff’s appraisal and ask it to be removed from sheriff sale to be reappraised. This could buy 30 to 60 days if successful.

5. Forbearances and loan modifications- Banks will delay or stop the foreclosure when you do a loan work out plan to start making payments. A loan modification is harder to get and will usually completely stop the foreclosure. It will actually add the back payments onto the end of the loan. A forbearance plan is easier but only pauses the foreclosure until you are completely caught up. Usually with this type of plan you will end up making a payment and a half or two payments each month. These agreements can be done spuriously just to buy an extra 30 days. However, using plans like these as a delay tactic is not recommended because generally there is a significant upfront payment required to start making payments again. You should not enter a plan like this with out good counsel from a financial advisor because if you default on a work out agreement lenders will not allow you to make another one for the same hardship. Sometimes government guaranteed loans have special zero interest loan programs for assisting your with your back payments.

6. If you are selling the house and have an offer, the bank will often times pull it from sheriff sale and delay the foreclosure process. My associates and I have seen banks stop sheriff sales and delay the foreclosure process numerous times.

7. Shortsales- This is a way of selling the home. A bank will accept less than what owed as payment in full if they are convinced that it is in their best interest to do so by a trained negotiator. This can delay the process 30 to 90 days while the bank evaluates the offer.

BONUS 1. A.- Find local attorney with atleast 5 years experience that will review procedure with which your were sued and file answers to delay the foreclosure.

BONUS 1 B. – Find an attorney that specializes sueing creditors for violations of TILA and other lending regulations and try to get your debt completely forgiven and foreclosure stopped.

Anybody else have any thing they did to delay the sale?

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The aspect of foreclosure timing is one of my most often asked questions. That is because foreclosure is a process and not an event. Always remember that a house is completely yours and you have full control of it until the ownership gets officially transferred by the court system thirty days after the Sheriff Sale.

Typically a lender will file legal action to take your house (also known as starting the foreclosure process) not sooner than ninety days after you have missed your first payment. Because banks tend to be a disorganized mess of merged mega corporation it is very common to see a bank not begin to take any legal action for even another thirty to sixty days or more after that.

When the lender’s attorney finally files a foreclosure suite, you will receive (or maybe you already have received) a packet full of complicated legal language listing you, the borrower and everyone else that possibly could be connected to the property, as defendants.

Many people are confused by this packet because it says that you have to respond within thirty days. They think that they have to be out of their home in thirty days or they will be kicked out on the street. If they stay in the house they quickly find out that this is not the case at all.

There are many factors beyond your control that may naturally delay the foreclosure process. Sometimes the attorneys a bank chooses are so overworked that they intentionally delay a case to make room for a large caseload. Other times proper court procedure might not have been followed and a judge will delay a foreclosure case. Court systems are so backed up right now that they can not handle all of the foreclosures being filed as more and more of them enter the funnel. Also if your mortgage is government guaranteed (i.e. FHA or VA) there are extra government regulations that take more time for your lender to comply with before they foreclose. These factors can be good for you if you use your extra time to take smart action.

Other factors may speed the process up. A good foreclosure attorney for the bank may be able to pull strings and accelerate your case. Your county common please court may double their staff (unlikely) and catch up on the back log of foreclosures.

A range of time from first missed payment to the court ordered title transfer in North Eastern Ohio is going to be at least five months minimum to 9 or 10 months. At one time foreclosures in Cuyahoga County were taking as long as twenty-four months before they were sold at the sheriff sale. However in the last year Ohio has passed new laws to help speed the process up. If you file bankruptcy you can delay the foreclosure process by two up to eight months depending on how it is handled.

Coming soon I will publish a table of typical foreclosure times as of this date for the 6 Counties surounding Cleveland and discuss how you can find out the actual time you have no matter which state or county you are in.

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August 22, 2000 is a day I will never forget as the events on that day have shaped my life in ways I could have never imagined and took me on the rollercoaster ride of my life! Everything happened just wrong… Everything… And it was my fault because it was I who had hugely miscalculated. This was the day I closed on the house that ended up nearly killing me!

 To start, this home needed a whole mountain range of work. I didn’t do my homework and I completely underestimated the repairs. The fix up and repair costs ended up being 3 times what I had estimated… but at the time I thought it was a great deal so I signed on the bottom line. I was naïve enough to believe the seller (who also happened to be someone I trusted as an advisor and mentor at the time) about what the value of the house was. When I went to sell it many months later I found that the top value for houses in that area was 80 percent of what I needed to sell my house for, just to break even.

To make matters worse I let myself be conned into taking out a loan with a 15% interest rate (because my “advisor” told me to. I also believed him on what the fix up costs would be). Frankly, just typing all of this into the computer is a little embarrassing because most of the people who are losing their home didn’t do it out of stupidity and greed like I did.

Then my low blood sugar blood sugar problems flared up to a point where I could barely get out of bed. I was truly lucky if I could simply work on the house for a couple of listless hours in a day. I was deeply depressed. I was frustrated. I despaired. I didn’t see any way out. I had borrowed many thousands of dollars from my family desperately trying finish this project. My girl friend and I had just broke up… and…

I got behind on my payments. I found myself in the deepest darkest most trying time of my life. I was not living the dream I had envisioned… I felt guilty. Guilty for being stupid. Guilty for not making my payments and most of all guilty for putting a hardship on my family members who had lent to me in good faith… and I couldn’t pay them back. I remember one moment clearly. My dad, wanting to see his son succeed had cosigned on the expensive renovation loan with me. He also maxed out the equity line on his personal home to lend me money to complete the project that had gone massively over budget. I remember standing with my arms around him as he sobbed in desperation, thinking that he was going to lose his own personal home, his credit and everything that he had worked for in his life. I wasn’t crying… I was too numb and overwhelmed and physically and emotionally exhausted for that. I felt horrible because it was my fault and I felt too sick and weak and powerless to make a change… and I felt completely alone with no one to advise me. My life was a train wreck and this is just the quick summary. In this post I can’t give you all of the details of my long road to recovery. But as Winter turns to Spring and then to Summer, so my life changed completely around. It started with a conviction that… NO MATTER WHAT!… SOME HOW!… I must absolutely get myself out of this situation.
Slowly things started to turn around. I was able to work hard and use diet to get my health more stable. I secured a job working with an experienced and trusted real estate professional that I could learn under and make money while doing it. I was able to work out an arrangement with my lender and get caught up.

I stumbled on a creative marketing technique that allowed me to sell my house for a fantasticly premium amount (after a year and a half on the market) and barely pay off the money I had borrowed on the house. Through the recovery process I have learned a great deal of information (sometimes the hard way) that I would love to share with you. This information was very expensive for me to acquire and I have used it to help many other people, like you and I, to take their lives off pause and START LIVING AGAIN.

I have completed many thousands of dollars in specialized training, courses and seminars regarding all aspects of real estate sales, real estate finance, loan originating, appraisal, creative financing, marketing, negotiating with banks, negotiating defaulted debt, judgments, real estate title, bankruptcy and credit repair.

I’ve reinforced this training with thousands of hours dealing with these issues in the field full time… helping people out. I am currently a licensed real estate agent and was formerly a licensed loan officer. Having this experience has given me purpose and drive in helping others. I am committed to making sure that others don’t go through the anguish that I did.

To that end I offer you this blog. My experience specifically centers around working with people in foreclosure keeping or selling their homes in the North Eastern Ohio and the Cleveland and surounding suburbs. Much of this information will center around that experience however I will attempt to taylor it to apply nationwide.

If you have questions for me to address on this blog and you are not in my area I would be glad to research the answers and post them on this blog if I don’t allready know them. I currently have a free ebook called “The Foreclosure Loopholes Report” which I will be slowly phasing out as I put it piece by piece on this blog. In doing so I will be expanding and updating and giving others the opurtinity to contribute and respond to these articles on how best to Stop Foreclosure.

If you are in the North Eastern Ohio area and want to keep your home I will talk to you on the phone for free and will give you assistance on how best to reach your goals of doing that. All I ask is that you fill out the Keep My House form on this website and allow me to read over your information call you back for an informed discussion. If you aren’t in Lorain County or Cuyahoga County or one of the surounding counties you can fill in the Keep My House form and I will direct your information to a someone in your area that can assist you. Of course anyone can reply to this blog and I will try to respond with helpful answers in a timely manner. Also at some point in the next three months I will be producing a stop foreclosure audio mp3 for you ipod people that will discuss much of what I talk about in an audio format.

If keeping your home is not an option I can sell your house as a licensed agent and realtor. I have a special plan for people in foreclosure where I can actually bill your lender for my brokerage fee and at the same time I have them lower the balance of your mortgage so you can sell your house quickly in a market that is very slow. Nearly all lenders will work with me on this and this service doesn’t cost you anything. My clients love the fact that their lender pays for me to represent them and they don’t have to pay a dime. I will talk more about this in upcoming posts. I also offer a lender negotiation service for out of state clients as well. Again the best thing to do is to fill out the Sell My House Form and allow me to call you back as soon as possible. This blog is designed to be able to educate you about your options. Its intent is to give you information that will guide you in making a good decision about your current situation. I wish you the very best.

Sincerely,

Andy Morris

P.S.  Obviously things have gotten much better now since this all happened.  Here is me with my bride Jenelle.  As of this post we’ve been married nearly 2.5 years.   Here is allso the after picture of that first house.

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Hello world!  I have started a much needed blog that discusses aspects of how to stop foreclosure.   Coming soon I am going to discuss the following and much much more!

*How to stay in your home and eliminate your current mortgage company

*How to sell and pay off your mortgage even if you owe too much

*How much time do your really have in your county before your house is sold and you have to move out

*The truth about so called “foreclosure consultants” and “Stop Foreclosure Guys”

*What really happens to your credit

*Steps can you do right now to start rebuilding your future.

*7 ways to buy more time so you can do the right thing

*The new alternative to bankruptcy now that the laws have changed.

*How to pay off your other unsecured credit cards, medical judgments for 10% to 60% of their value

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