What You Need to Know to Stop Mortgage Foreclosure

Do you want to save your home from foreclosure? Here are five things you must know in order to stop mortgage foreclosure.

1. The sooner you act the better. As soon as you house goes into foreclosure, you are sitting on a ticking time bomb. The foreclosure process moves quickly. More quickly in some states than in others but you have very little time once the process has been started. You need to start talking to your lender and you need to get a plan together if you want to stop mortgage foreclosure.

2. Get out of denial about your financial situation. You are obviously in financial trouble. Accept that. Come to terms with it and inform the people in your life who need to be informed. If you are about to lose your house and your spouse does not know anything about it, you have a problem. Sit down with your spouse and have an honest conversation. Sit down and take a good hard look at your income and your bills. Figure out where you can cut back. Figure out what you can sell in order to save your house. Get a second job if you have to. The only way you are going to stop mortgage foreclosure is to get honest about where you currently are.

3. Be cautious about accepting help from people who send you “I can help you save your house” letters in the mail. You will start getting a ton of these. Many are scams. Do not give anyone money to help you save your home without doing some serious due diligence. This means checking with the Better Business Bureau, asking for references, and getting in writing exactly what they are going to do for you. Make sure that you understand exactly what they are telling you and do not be conned into signing anything the first time you meet with them.

4. Swallow your pride and ask for help. The thought of begging for help from strangers had me breaking out in a cold sweat. But I did it. I asked for help and advice from people who barely knew me and from some who did not know me at all. It opened my eyes to options that I did not know even existed. When you are looking for ways to stop mortgage foreclosure, you need to be open to all possibilities and open to accepting help from whatever source it comes from.

5. Do not ignore the letters and calls from your bank. I did this and it was bad, horrible actually. Ignoring a problem does not make it go away. It only makes it worse. Talk to your bank. Often this is going to mean getting awfully darn persistent. Call as many times as you need to call in order to talk to an actual human being. And all of those annoying letters from your bank and your bank’s lawyers? Read them and do the best you can to understand them. Research what you do not understand. In order to stop mortgage foreclosure, you have to really understand what you are dealing with. The only way to do that is to read what your bank has sent you and to talk to them.