*note-This is a transcript of foreclosure help video lesson three. If you would like to see the 7 free video lessons and download the mp3’s and the pdf homework, opt in the left hand side or visit the free stop foreclosure videos page.

Benefits and draw backs of a short sale.

Hi and welcome to day two of the free test drive of the Short Sale Your Home and Get Paid to do it home study course. Hi I’m Andy Morris and today I want to go over the question: Is a short sale right for you? Today will be a little shorter than yesterday, and I’m not going over so many options. I’m just going to cover pluses and minuses of doing a short sale.

The benefits of a short sale are the following:

• Short sale benefit #1- Credit good faith- You show good faith when you apply for credit in the future. When a potential creditor looks back and sees that that you did a short sale they can see that you took proactive action to get out of a common situation. Although the FICO score is proprietary, evidence shows that in general a short sale will be similar to a 90 day late as to the affect it has on your your credit immediately. It will typically lower your score by 150 points and it will dip down and slowly dissipate in the following months as opposed to say 250 points that would be the typical credit score drop down if your home is actually repossessed. If your home is reposessed not only will your score typically drop more but that notation will typically effect your score negatively for a longer period of time.
• Short sale benefit #2- Future mortgages- Underwriter rules are changing to overwhelmingly favor the person who does a short sale as a opposed to have their house foreclose. When you go to apply for a loan in the future, for instance, Fannie Mae has now made a rule that an otherwise qualified borrower can not get a mortgage with them if he or she has lost his or her home to foreclosure in the last 5 years. However if if a prospective borrower did a short sale he or she will only have to wait 2 years. Fannie Mae is probably the biggest lender in the country, or the biggest mortgage holder in the country.
• Short sale benefit #3- Avoid a defficiency judgement- Also as far as a short sale goes, you have the opportunity to negotiate and avoid a deficiency collection. This gives you the opportunity when you do a short sale to be able to talk with the lender about the outcome of that deficiency judgment that could come against you. Typically you can get that forgiven and move on free of mortgage debt. However if you let it go to foreclosure you don’t have that same negotiation opportunity and why would a lender even want to work with you after you let it go. They may as well come after you for the difference or keep it on your credit.
• Short sale benefit #4- Save your dignity- Doing a short sale is a dignified way to sell your house. It’s much more dignified than just letting it be sold at the auction steps in a public way that is  publicly advertised… so it’s a much better way to go.
• Short sale benefit #5- Benefit financially- If you use my method for short selling your house there is a potential to get paid for your efforts in several different ways and possibly get some of your unsecured debt paid off as well. The drawbacks of a short sale are the following because I don’t want to just tell you a positive of doing a short sale so you buy my course.

The following are potential short sale drawbacks:

• Short sale drawback #1- Hard work and lots of follow up- I want you to understand that there’s a lot of hard work and intense follow up to do a short sale.
• Short sale drawback #2- Your credit may still suck- Just because you do a short sale your credit is not necessarily going to be hunky dory and immediately jump back to that pre-foreclosure, “I can go any amount of money for any thing I want at any time I want” credit score. If you missed payments those missed payments are going to be on your credit report unless you can somehow negotiate that out which you may be able to if you ask for it. My Short Sale Your Home and Get Paid home study course includes a section on this. Typically you’re still going to have a hit on your credit from doing a short sale.
• Short sale drawback #3- May not work in your situation- There will be times when because of your requirements a short sale simply will not work for you. It could be that you don’t have enough time to do a short sale and we’ll talk about time frames in the next two video lessons. It could be that for whatever reason a short sale does not end up working for you.
• Short sale drawback #4- Tax consequences- Also something to consider is that any time that there’s a forgiven debt or written off debt that a bank is required to report that to the IRS just as if you had made that money as income. They would report it in a 1099, and this could happen with a short sale deficiency or even if it ends up being a deficiency after it goes to foreclosure. The tax consequences in a foreclosure situation should always be discussed with a knowledgeable advisor and there are many ways to get around this and so you should discuss it with a knowledgeable tax advisor. Just recently in 2007 congress did pass a law that allows you not to have to claim this as income. This law applies to people who actually lived in their home before it was foreclosed or sold on a short sale. If you are insolvent or filed a chapter 7 bankruptcy typically that would allow you not to have to pay taxes on from the forgiven debt as well. Depending on your tax basis and the actual numbers you may be able to write off the loss from selling your house against the 1099 income from debt forgiveness as well. There are other ways to not have to pay taxes on forgiven debt so I can’t emphasize enough the need to work with a competent accountant.
• Another drawback is that you have to disclose to a buyer that this is a short sale for they make an offer, so you won’t be able to completely hide that this is in foreclosure. You probably have gotten a bunch of letters anyways from people if it’s actually gone to the point of foreclosure. So it won’t be completely private anyways. A short sale is something that you can do in a dignified way to get your home sold have the least negative effects.

A bonus benefit to short sales that I didn’t mention is that you can combine a short sale with a lease option, so you can sell a house to somebody and have them lease option it back to you. Now you want to make sure that your letter of acceptance given to you by your bank to do a short sale doesn’t specifically say that you can’t do a lease option back. FHA loans for example have provision that says you can’t sell your house on a short sale to any friend or family member or person with whom you have an outside arrangement with.

I worked with client who was referred to me by a loan officer. She owed $145,000 on a house, which was probably worth $105,000 at the time. I was able to negotiate the price all the way down to $85,000 and her husband was actually going to purchase it. However, she ended up backing out of the transaction at the last second because the lender offered her a loan modification plan that was more certain to her than her husband’s new FHA loan that he was getting. It’s to bad she didn’t complete the transaction because the household debt would have been lowered by over $60,000. Instead she chose to continue making payments on the $140,000 which is admirable.

Your homework question today is to consider the following: Based on these benefits and drawbacks is a short sale something you should pursue?

Please leave your questions and comments regarding this transcript and or video content below and I will do my best to answer or reply! Thanks:)

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*note-This is a transcript of section three of video one. If you would like to see the 7 free video lessons and download the mp3’s and the pdf homework, opt in to my free newsletter on the left hand side or visit the free stop foreclosure videos page.

Foreclosure options for delaying foreclosure

If you have chosen to move you have plenty of options. You may want to use a delay option along with any of the move options to facilitate a sale and to facilitate your move. A note regarding litigation which I mentioned in two of the previous strategies, if you do any kind of litigation it increases the motivation of the lender to work with you and suddenly you’re a much high priority because costs them money even if they win. Attorney time is very expensive for your lender and it just increases the loses that much more. Litigation is a good thing when you’re looking to do a short sale.

My foreclosure option #12- Sell with short sale- If if based on your current financial situation you really can’t afford the you will obviously be moving. If that is the case the short sale is your only other option than a voluntary or forced reposession. A short sale is a great option because it gives you the oppurtunity to negotiate your debt.

What is a short sale? A short sale is simply where your lender agrees to lower the balance so that your mortgage can be paid off and you can sell your home. This is especially necessary in areas where the market has fallen drastically. As of this writing that happens to be the case for much of the United States right now. When this happens people end up oweing much more than what their house is worth. If he or she has a financial situation then a short sale may be a sellers option.

Nearly every single lender in the U.S. can do a short sale. Most lenders have a department called the loss mitigation department that would handle all short sale requests. Sometimes short sales are handled by the collection department of your lender.

My foreclosure option #13- Sell with full pay off- Since we’re talking about all the options for moving, you could sell your house and maybe pay it off in full. If you don’t require a short sale there’s no need to do one, if the market hasn’t dropped below what you owe then you can afford to sell and pay everything off in full. Like option number one this is the obvious option and you don’t want to over look it.

My foreclosure option #14- Deed in lieu- Other moving options your lender may offer you include deed in lieu of foreclosure, the cash for keys program and/or a negotiated delayed move. A deed in lieu of foreclosure is simply when you sign the deed of your house back to your lender and move out. The main benefit for you is it shows good faith to your lender and you won’t have to be dragged through a long and drawn out foreclosure process. You can hope that your lender is more lenient if there is a deficiency after they sell the house themselves. However a deed in lieu has an identical effect on your credit as a foreclosure and you may end up being on the hook for the loss to the lender. You typically will not qualify for a deed in lieu if there are any othe liens like junior mortgages or judgements attaching to the property. Doing the deed in lieu may make you eligible for the for the cash for keys program or the negotiated delayed move program.

My foreclosure option #15- Cash for keys- Cash for keys is when is you move out and you give the bank the keys to the property and they give you a small amount of cash (500 to 1500). Don’t expect cash if you have allready moved out and given your lender the deed and the keys however if your lender accepts you for that program a little bit of extra cash could come in handy. A cash for keys program may be offered to you in combination with the deed in lieu of foreclosure or you may be offered a cash for keys program as an alternative to the bank having to evict you after having repossessed the house as a way to ensure that you have not damaged it.

My foreclosure option #16- Negotiated delayed move- A possible alternative to a cash for keys program is a negotiatied delayed move. It may be that someone in foreclosure has special circumstances like health issues and they need an extra month to move. Or a 90 year old women needs some time to arrange her stay in a nursing home. In special situations it is not uncommon for a lender to allow a delayed move especially for public relations reasons. This may not be something you are offered but if you think a solution like this could be justified you may want to ask for it.

Foreclosure option #16- Leave, do nothing and let it foreclose- We’ve talked about a lot of options here including a few obvious ones. You can obviously make the choice to leave, do nothing and just let your home foreclose. In fact you may have allready moved out and your home is headed to foreclosure. If this is the case you might as will make the extra effort to sell your house on a short sale. If you are just too busy and overwhelmed you could make this choice and it won’t kill you however you owe it to yourself and your credit to atleast turn it over to a short sale proffessional to let them work a short sale on it if you no longer live in your house.

Foreclosure option #17- Stay, do nothing, let it foreclose and get evicted by the bank- The benefit of this is free living and that is about all you get if you choose to stay in your home, do nothing about it, let it foreclose and then get evicted by the lender. You may want to atleast try and avoid a mess in your future by putting it on the market for a short sale a few months before it is to go to sale. This may even cause you to have some extra time to live in your home if your bank extends the foreclosure sale date so you can sell it. Obviously you will benefit more by doing something proactive. There are plenty of other options right here in this artcile that set you up for more success in life.

There you have it; I’ve talked about as many ways as I can think of to stay in your house, to sell your house and move, and strategies for delaying foreclosure on your house.

I’ve included some homework for you below so you actually get your value for this portion of this course. I want you fill out the hardship worksheet that I’ve included below in a link (note all this information is available to subscribers. Please subscribe to the free foreclosure help video course here). This work sheet is a Fannie Mae standard work sheet. Fannie Mae owns more loans than any entity in the United States so, it’s a standard work sheet, most lenders require something like it or this exact one and it will help you kind of come to a moment of truth. It’ll help you evaluate your own income. Also there’s an equity analysis here to kind of help you understand how much you owe and how much can you conservatively get out of this market. You also need to think about if your hardship long-term or short term hardship. It’s very easy to hope and believe that you can do something, but you don’t want to waste precious time, money and energy on path that is unfeasible. You simply cannot continue robbing from Peter to pay Paul if that is something you are doing.

If you’re completely done with your hardship and you just need a little help to get started making payments, then you want to pursue one of the keep your house options. One of the worst things that you can do is fight to keep a house that even when your hardship is over, there’s no way you can keep it because of the costs.

You need to understand that and just move ahead and make a proper decision based on your knowledge of what reality really is. Some questions for you are: Could you make the payment if your bank lender would just allow you to make payments with out having to catch up the arrearage? With your current income, could you immediately start making the original payment amount on your loan? Do you want to keep your home? Can you afford your home and still afford to eat? How many payments are you behind? Ask yourself these questions and write them out on paper. Do a little journaling to clear your mind so that you can make a good decision regarding all of your options. Follow up your decision with immediate action.

If you have decided a short sale may be a good option for you please consider Short Sale Your Home and Get Paid course. Even if you don’t plan on getting paid this is something that you could use to educate what ever proffessional you work and make sure your short sale is successful.

Please leave your questions and comments regarding this transcript and or video content below.  Thanks!

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*note-This is a transcript of section two of video one. If you would like to see the 7 free video lessons and download the mp3’s and the pdf homework, opt in to my free newsletter on the left hand side or visit the free stop foreclosure videos page.

Strategies for delaying foreclosure

Let’s cover some of the strategies for delaying foreclosure. There are many different ways to delay a foreclosure and I recommend that you combine these strategies along with the strategies for a stay in your house strategy or a move out of your house strategy that I have here. Delaying can be necessary when you are trying to figure out where to go or what to do next. Not to mention the fact that every extra day you can stay in your home it is a good thing. A future one of these free lessons will include over 15 different delay strategies that you can use to assist you in whatever you’re looking to do.

My foreclosure option #9- Delay foreclosure with chapter 7 bankruptcy- Chapter 7 bankruptcy wipes out all your debt and will also delay a foreclosure. It won’t completely stop it but it’ll allow you to stay in your house for the two to four months that it takes for the bankruptcy to be processeed. Because the mortgage attached to your house, and your house is like a person that cosigned on the loan, your lender can still collect against the house by foreclosure whether you file chapter 7 bankruptcy or not.

My foreclosure option #10- Delay foreclosure with a chapter 13 bankruptcy- I just discussed chapter 13 bankruptcy as a way of staying in your home however like I mentioned normally it doesn’t work out anyways. I have been told by a bankruptcy attorney that fewer than 10 percent of chapter 13 bankruptcy plans are ever completed. However chapter 13 bankruptcy can work great as a delay. If payments are not made it will at the minimum delay everything for the date that that you file the bankruptcy to the time it takes to drop back out and be released out of the bankruptcy for foreclosure. Typically this is a minimum of a 60 day delay and can end up being much more of delay depending where the foreclosure was in the local court system. Remember that a bankruptcy of any kind is a federal court process and it trumps any lower court process and will halt it in its tracks immediately as soon as its filed until it can be pulled back out.

My foreclosure option #11- Delay foreclosure by litigation- Also there are delay strategies that involve litigation. You can file an answer pro se. Usually it is in your best interest to file an answer when you are facing judicial foreclosure. You can also file a continuance after you file your answer which simply means you would file a paper saying “I can’t meet at this hearing could you reschedule for further on” and that type of thinking will give you extra time in a judicial foreclosure. I spend a whole lesson on tips for filing an answer and continuance as well as offering a sample answer and continuance in pdf format in a future lesson. You can sign up for that by taking a test drive of my free stop foreclosure videos.

Also there are other options for litigation where if you get an attorney where you definately need an atorney and I always recommend you get an attorney when you are in foreclosure. A good attorney who’s experienced can find places where the foreclosure attorney maybe didn’t file his or her paperwork properly or good attorney can defend you based based on the compliance of the lender in the way they wrote the loan and serviced it and attempted to collect the debt. In so challenging the case your case can be delayed or it could easily get thrown out of court. A good attorney can probably delay a foreclosure case indefinitely through counter suits that focus on a variety of different levels. So I always recommend an attorney if you’re trying to delay or move or whatever you do. Make sure sure the attorney you hire has experience doing what you’re looking to have them do.

Stay tuned to these video lessons. I will be focusing on 15 separate strategies for delaying foreclosure.

Please leave your questions and comments below… thanks!

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*note-This is a transcript of section one of video one. If you would like to see the 7 free video lessons and download the mp3’s and the pdf homework, opt in to my free newsletter on the left hand side.

Your options for avoiding foreclosure and staying in your home

My foreclosure option #1- Catch everything current- Let’s start with your options for staying. Some of these options are obvious like you can cure the default and catch everything current. That’s an option if you have money. Obviously I’m assuming that you wouldn’t have gotten in the situation if you had money to pay your loan current.

My foreclosure option #2- Litigation to erase your loan balance- Another option that you may have is litigation. Although we live in a litigious society for most of us or atleast for my self I know that I don’t enjoy going to court and it’s never fun. However, there are attorneys that have made their business to challenge lenders on predatory lending practices. Even if there was no predatory lending often times banks will violate any one of the many sections of the volumes of banking code. Some attorneys have been known to find violations of these banking codes and actually bring those to light in the court room and try to erase your loan. If you’re lucky you’ll stay in your house forever for free. At the very least it can become a delay tactic to give you more time to live in your house. (note- I am currently looking for attorneys that have experience actually erasing mortgage debt. If you know of a good one or you are one please contact me by filling out the feedback form on my FORECLOSURE PREVENTION ATTORNEYS page.

My foreclosure option #3- File Chapter 13 Bankruptcy- Another option if you want to stay in your house indefinitely to be able to do that is to file a chapter 13 bankruptcy. If you want to stay in your house chapter 13 bankruptcy is an option for some people. For most people it doesn’t work and it ends up simply being a delay tactic which is might not be a bad thing. Chapter 13 bankruptcy is a federal court action that trumps all other lower court actions, foreclosure actions and a trustee appointed by the federal court will actually require force all your creditors accept payment arrangements.

Chapter 13 rarely works because because usually the payment plan created is extremely aggressive. I’ve been told the trustees in charge managing these bankruptcy’s have a financial incentive to create very aggressive payment plans that can make nearly impossible to succeed in completing them.. If you make your agreed payments on time every single time according to the plan you lender has to accept those payments. However if you’re a day late even once any lender can pop out of the chapter 13 and pursue you, say for foreclosure or judgment or something like that. You have to be aware of that and be able to possibly increase your income, increase your likely hood of being successful in a chapter 13 plan.

My foreclosure option #4- FHA partial claim- Another option you may have is something called partial claim. Partial claims are available for people who have FHA loans. A lender may be able to help you get out of foreclosure by actually making a claim on the FHA insurance. HUD insures or backs the loan and so that claim ends up being extra money that you owe on top of the mortgage. It will bring you current and then that amount of money that you borrow basically ends up being put on the back of the loan when it gets paid off. This is one of the added benefits you recieve if you happen to have an FHA loan.

My foreclosure option #5- Loan modification- Another option is a loan modification program. A loan modification is basically a complete change in the terms of your loan. Your lender actually remakes the loan. The lender has a lot of leeway to modify a loan. When they choose to allow you to modify a loan, they can do things like: extend the terms, lower the payment and lower interest rates. Or they may increase rate but reamortize the loan and to make the payments more affordable. They have a lot of different ways you can modify a loan. Generally a lender is going to try and not do a loan modification if possible and possibly do a forbearance plan instead, which requires you to put more money up front. We’ll talk about the forbearance plan, however loan modification is one of the most beneficial things you can do if you can get a lender to do it. More and more lenders in their desperate state are going straight to loan modifications. They are not playing the games they use to several years back where they try to force you into a much more difficult plan that just sends you further into foreclosure. In fact lenders are now so desparate that I even saw a first mortgage lender offer to pay off a second mortgage and on top of that reduce the balance by 10 percent just to avoid taking their borrower to court.

My foreclosure option #6- Forebearance plan- The forbearance plan is a sibling of the loan modification plan. A lot of people don’t know the difference however it is very significant. If you are already in foreclosure and you do a forebearance plan your lender will typically just pause the foreclosure. This means the foreclosure is not canceled. They don’t redo the loan at all they simply ask you to start making payments plus a little bit or a lot of bits extra to repay the back payments. Typically they ask you to put pretty large deposit up front to help with the attorneys legal fees and other bull shit fees. Normally for the average person who’s having a hard time handling a loan anyways and they got behind, a forbearance plan simply is not a realistic option unless the lender is very generous in the terms they offer.

My foreclosure option #7- Foreclosure Bail Out Refinance- In addition to the other methods for staying in your home that I have already talked about there’s something called the foreclosure bail out refinance. Federal law has created a lot of opportunities with the crises in mortgage and loans they’ve increased incentives for banks to work with you. One of the things they’ve done is if you were in a subprime loan that adjusted up and you went behind after that adjustment up you may qualify, even though your credit is totally shot and your score is zero. Your income still has to be qualify but not your credit. And you can get a FHA loan at a good rate that’s fixed for 30 years. If your property appraises for what your new loan amount is going to be when you refinance that’s something that very well could be an option for you and you should look into.

For most people refinancing is not an option for foreclosure if you’ve got 90 days late your credit is so shot that no lender will touch your except if you owe very small percentage of what your house is worth or if you fit into this foreclosure bailout refinance plan.

My foreclosure option #7- Foreclosure Mediation- Another potential option for you works along side some of the other options is something called court mediation. This is a relatively new phenomenon. It didn’t use to happen very often but with all the things that are happening the courts are stepping up to try to do their part so that they don’t have to be the condiute for so many people losing their homes to foreclosure. For instance, Ohio created a plan which is being adopted by most of the judicial foreclosure states. The county courts are encouraged to offer mediation to all foreclosure cases. If the defendant (you) accepts the offer from the mediation the court can actually force a lender plaintiff to fly a representative from across the nation, to come meet with you face-to-face. In mediation no party is required to actually do anything other than meet however anything agreed upon in mediation is legally binding and everything is recorded by the proffessional court ordered mediator. If a lender has to spend the money to send someone to meet you face to face they suddenly become much more motivated to make that money count and to make something happen. This could be an oppurtinity work with a person from that actually lives in our country and speaks english to create a loan modification or forebearance plan that actually can work for you.

Mediation can also be worked into some of the other strategies other than staying in the house. You can get a lot of different results from mediation that are beneficial to both you and the bank. It is one of the most effective ways to work with your lender on a level playing field if you have the oppurtunity.

My foreclosure option #8- Lease back- Another way you could possibly stay in your house is called a lease back. Lease backs aren’t always legal so you want to check with an attorney that understands your local and state law as well as the federal regulations.. If you’re doing a short sale and you combine that with the lease back then you’re going to want to make sure that the details of the lender acceptance letter for the short sale doesn’t specifically say that you can’t do a lease back or that you can’t sell it to an purchaser that you’ve made extra arrangements with.

A lease back is where you would actually short sale or just sell it like normal to say a friend or “friendly person” or investor. That person would then lease it back to you, usually with a purchase price agreed to at a certain point in the future. This gives you time to repair your credit and purchase your home back. I have to warn you credit repair doesn’t always work. However if you sell the house and pay off the loan and avoid actuall foreclosure, you should be able to purchase a house within two years. I’ll talk more about lease backs in the future but all the strategies in the full “Short Sale of Your Hme and Get Paid” course will work even if you’re selling it to a friend on a a lease back.

I invite your comments and questions regarding this transcript or the video below. If I don’t answer you directly on the comments section I am going to attempt to answer your questions by video on this blog. Thank you!

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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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