Navigating The Steps Of Foreclosure

A foreclosure is something that your family will never forget. It can be traumatic, and it helps to know all the steps so that you’re not caught unsuspecting in the event that it happens to your family. Foreclosure follows a relatively simple and straightforward process that is pretty much the same from state to state. Herein you will find the steps of foreclosure and how to navigate them.

A foreclosure occurs when the money owed to a bank for monthly house payments in the form of a mortgage is interrupted, missed, or neglected so that the bank continues to receive no payments from you. You will have put up the house for collateral for the mortgage, and they can recover the house if you fail to make payments on it. They can’t just come in and kick you out of your house. They will have to get a court order for foreclosure, sell your house at an auction, and then the new owner will have to evict you. You may have a month to 6 months before you actually have to leave your home. So, if you think a foreclosure is going to happen to you, it is not the end of the world.

The first step is that the bank will send a sheriff or Notice of Intent to Foreclose through certified mail. The bank will simultaneously begin action in the court to make the foreclosure legal, valid, and binding. The legal notices must be published in the paper at this time, as required by law. Throughout this whole process, you will have attempts to make payments or settle with the bank unless they have demanded payment in full after a series of missed mortgage payments. This is called acceleration, and a bank is full within their legal rights to do this as stipulated by the contract. The court will then hold a hearing about the house that is to be foreclosed on. The court will then issue an order to foreclose on the house. After that, there will be a legal notice of actual foreclosure sale and advertisements will be simultaneously published in the papers. The house will then be sold to the highest bidder at an auction. Throughout this whole ordeal, you will have some opportunities to settle with the bank. They will usually try to contact you over and over again through phone or mail to work out some kind of deal to get you to make the payments because it is in their interest to get you to make the payments instead of having to foreclose on the home and re-sell it.

Sometimes, you will get phone calls from certain people after a foreclosure takes place. This is because the notice of foreclosure will be published in the paper, and all people can see it. Mortgage brokers, chapter 13 attorneys, private financiers, mortgage holders, crooks, and con artists will contact you – each trying to benefit themselves at your expense. Watch out especially for the crooks and con artists. Warn your elder parents if they are very old because crooks and con artists go after senior citizens especially that can’t hear, understand, or think very well. These people prey on the weak and helpless, and they are all too willing to exploit a foreclosure.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 10:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.