Dragging Out The Foreclosure Process
July 8th, 2009 categories: Chicago Real Estate News
Losing a home to foreclosure is a terrible experience. These days, it’s also an experience that takes longer and longer to reach resolution.
The Washington Post recently ran an interesting profile of families who are no longer able to make their monthly mortgage payments. These families know that they’re losing their homes to foreclosure. The only problem is that their banks or lenders haven’t been able to foreclose on their residences yet. Lenders are just too busy dealing with the record number of foreclosures on their dockets to begin the process in a timely manner.
This may seem like a blessing: After all, it lets families live in their homes basically for free while their banks or lenders dawdle. But to the families interviewed in the Post’s story, it’s more of a long nightmare.
Many of these families have packed up and moved on to lower-cost housing or rental options. But because their banks or lenders haven’t yet foreclosed on their former homes, the owners are still responsible for maintenance.
This is bad news because it also means that the nation’s foreclosure numbers will only continue to rise. The numbers will surely jump as banks and lenders slowly begin to catch up to the growing number of homeowners who are no longer paying their monthly mortgages but are still living in their homes.
I always have the same advice for homeowners worried about losing their own residences to foreclosure: Call your lender. Right away.
If you’ve missed payments, or fear that you’ll soon begin missing them, you need to immediately call your mortgage lender. Remember, your bank or lender doesn’t want you to lose your home. Foreclosures are a blessing for no one. Instead, your lender will do whatever it can to help you stay in the home.
This may mean renegotiating the terms of your loan, giving you a grace period to catch up with missed payments or lowering your interest rate. But you’ll never know just what compromise can be reached if you don’t call first.
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