Stop Big Spending - Support for the Spending Sprees

by Janet Wickell

Steps You Can Take to Avoid Foreclosure and Save Your Home

A loss of a job, medical expenses and other life-altering occurrences can happen to anyone, causing us to fall behind in our loan payments. If we neglect paying our credit cards it hurts our credit rating, but if we stop paying our home loan the situation is even worse, because the lender can foreclose, taking ownership the home.

Don't Be Embarassed

You must put your pride on hold if you're truly serious about stopping the foreclosure process. Lenders do not want to foreclose, and will usually work with you to get you back on track.

Rule #1: Contact your lender as soon as you know your payments will be late.

Rule #2: Never ignore the lender's letters or phone calls. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away.

Rule #3: Never assume your situation is hopeless.

Solutions for Temporary Problems

Reinstatement
Reinstatement might be possible when you are behind in your payments but can promise a lump sum to bring payments current by a specific date.

Forbearance
In forbearance, you are allowed to delay payments for a short period, with the understanding that another option will be used afterwards to bring the account current.

Lenders sometimes combine Forbearance with Reinstatement if you know you'll have the funds to bring your account current by a specific date.

A Repayment Plan
If your account is past due, but you can now make payments, the lender might agree to let you catch up by adding a portion of the past due amount to a certain number of monthly payments until your account is current.

Solutions for Longer-Term Problems

Mortgage Modification

If you can make your regular payment now, but cannot catch-up the past due amount, the lender might agree to modify your mortgage. One solution is to add the past due amount into your existing loan, financing it over a long term.

Modification might also be possible if you no longer have the ability to make payments at the former level. The lender can modify your mortgage to extend the length of your loan (or take other steps to reduce your payments).

Selling Your Home

If catching up is not a possibility, the lender might agree to put foreclosure on hold to give you some time to attempt to sell your home.

Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure

When the lender allows you to give-back your property--and forgives the debt. It does have a negative impact on your credit record, but not as much as a foreclosure.

The lender might require that you attempt to sell the house for a specific time period before agreeing to this option, and it might not be possible if there are other liens against the home.

For FHA Loans

The lender might be able to help you receive a one-time payment from the FHA Insurance fund. Your loan must be at least 4 months but no more than 12 months past due and you must show you are able to begin making full mortgage payments.

• You must sign a promissory note which allows HUD to place a lien on your property for the amount received from the fund.
• The note is interest free, but must eventually be repaid.
• The note becomes due when you pay off the loan or when you sell the property.

For VA Loans

VA VA Regional Loan Centers offer financial counseling that's designed to help you avoid foreclosure. Call 1-800-827-1000 and ask for the phone number of the Loan Service Representative in your area.

Contact a HUD-Approved Counselor

If you don't want to talk with your lender first, contact a HUD-approved counseling agency. A counselor can help you determine which options might be available to you and negotiate with your lender to work out a repayment program. You can find an approved agency on the Web.

Put the Process in Motion

Your lender won't automatically put you into a program to bring your loan up-to-date. You must put the plan into motion and provide the lender with the documentation they require to analyze your financial situation.

Although lenders do not want to foreclose if it can be avoided, they do want to make sure you can follow-through on any promises you make to bring your account current.

Be prepared to share all details about your financial situation with your lender.

• An explanation of your current financial circumstances.
• Details about your current income.
• A list of your household expenses.

The lender will review and analyze your situation before offering a solution to bring your loan up-to-date.

Repairing Your Credit

If your home loan is past due, your other obligations probably are too. A nonprofit credit counseling agency might be able to help you work with your creditors to reduce your monthly payments by lowering interest rates or extending repayment periods.

The key word here is nonprofit. Steer clear of companies that promise you quick, easy results for all of your credit problems--if you pay them a large fee. You know better--that's not how it works in the real world. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling is a good place to start. 

Produce The Note “How-To”

June 19, 2008

Fight Foreclosure: Make ‘Em Produce The Note!

Source: http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2008/06/19/produce-the-note-how-to/

Using the “produce the note” strategy is something all homeowners facing foreclosure can do. If you believe you’ve been treated unfairly, fight back. We have created templates for a legal request, a letter to your lender and a motion to compel to help you through the process.  Read the step by step “how to” under the videos.

Special note:  In some states, a lender can foreclose on your home without going to court.  These are called non-judicial foreclosure states.  You can still use the “Produce the Note” strategy in these states, but it takes a few more steps on your part.

Produce the Note – Steps To Follow:

WHO OWNS THE NOTE?

Your goal is to make certain the institution suing you is, in fact, the owner of the note (see steps to follow below). There is only one original note for your mortgage that has your signature on it. This is the document that proves you owe the debt.

During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to another lender or servicer or sliced up and sold to investors as securitized packages on Wall Street. In the rush to turn these over as fast as possible to make the most money, many of the new lenders did not get the proper paperwork to show they own the note and mortgage. This is the key to the produce the note strategy. Now, many lenders are moving to foreclose on homeowners, resulting in part from problems they created, and don’t have the proper paperwork to prove they have a right to foreclose.

THE HARM

If you don’t challenge your lender, the court will simply allow the foreclosure to proceed. It’s important to hold lenders accountable for their carelessness. This is the biggest asset in your life. It’s just a piece of paper to them, and one they likely either lost or destroyed.

When you get a copy of the foreclosure suit, many lenders now automatically include a count to re-establish the note. It often reads like this: “…the Mortgage note has either been lost or destroyed and the Plaintiff is unable to state the manner in which this occurred.” In other words, they are admitting they don’t have the note that proves they have a right to foreclose.

If the lender is allowed to proceed without that proof, there is a possibility another institution, which may have bought your note along the way, will also try to collect the same debt from you again.

A Tennessee borrower recently had precisely that happen to her. Her lender, Ameriquest, foreclosed on her in July of 2007. About three months later, another bank sent her a default notice for the mortgage on the house she just lost. She called to find out what was going on. After being transferred from place to place and left on hold for lengthy periods of time, no one could explain what happened. They said they would get back to her, but never did. Now, she faces the risk of having her credit continually damaged for a debt she no longer owes.

FIGHT FOR FAIRNESS

This process is not intended to help you get your house for free. The primary goal is to delay the foreclosure and put pressure on the lender to negotiate. Despite all the hype about lenders wanting to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, most borrowers know that’s not the reality.

Too many homeowners have experienced lender resistance to their efforts to work out a payment structure to keep them in their homes. Many lenders bear responsibility for these defaults, because they put borrowers into unfair loans using deceptive, hard-sell practices and then made the problem worse with predatory servicing.

Most homeowners just want these lenders to give them reasonable terms on their mortgages, many of which were predatory to begin with. With the help of judges who see through these predatory practices, lenders will feel the pressure to work with borrowers to keep them in their homes. Don’t forget lenders made incredible amounts of money by using irresponsible practices to issue and service these loans. That greed led to the foreclosure crisis we’re in today. Allowing lenders to continue foreclosing on home after home, destroying our neighborhoods and our economy hurts us all. So, make it hard for your lender to take your home. Make ‘em produce the note!

STEPS TO FOLLOW

A. If your lender has already filed suit to foreclose on your home:

1.     Use the first form. It’s a fill-in-the-blank legal request to your lender asking that the original note be produced, before it can proceed with the foreclosure. In some jurisdictions, the courts require the original request to be filed with the clerk of court and a copy of the request to be sent to the attorney representing the lender. To find out the rules where you live, call the Clerk of Court in your jurisdiction.

2.     If the lender’s attorney does not respond within 30 days, file a motion to compel with the court and request that the court set a hearing on your motion. That, in effect, asks the judge to order the lender to produce the documents.

3.     The judge will issue a ruling at your hearing. Many judges around the country are becoming more sympathetic to homeowners, because of the prevalence of predatory lending and servicing. In the past, many lenders have relied upon using lost note affidavits, but in many cases, that’s no longer enough to satisfy the judge. They are holding the lender to the letter of the law, requiring them to produce evidence that they are the true owners of the note. For example:

§        In October 2007, Ohio Federal Court Judge Christopher Boyko dismissed 14 foreclosure cases brought by investors, ruling they failed to prove they owned the properties they were trying to seize.

B. If you are in default, but your lender has not yet filed suit against you:

1.     Use the second form. It’s a fill-in-the-blank letter to your lender which also requests they produce the original note, before taking foreclosure action against you.

2.     If the lender does not respond and files suit against you to foreclose, follow the steps above.

UPDATE: CNN features The Consumer Warning Network and the “Produce The Note” strategy. Borrowers are putting this plan into action and getting results!

Consumer Warning Network Featured on CNN

THE LATEST: Borrower wins more time to fight foreclosure! At a court hearing Tuesday, a Pinellas County, Florida Judge denied Wachovia the right to proceed with its foreclosure against borrower Jacqueline O’Brien (profiled in the CNN story).  Instead, O’Brien was granted a continuance, as she pursues the produce the note strategy.  Wachovia expressed interest in renegotiating the terms of the loan, rather than continuing the court battle.  We’ll keep you posted!

Produce the Note - Fighting Foreclosure - CNN below in Video

Filing for Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy Basics provides basic information to debtors, creditors, court personnel, the media, and the general public on different aspects of the federal bankruptcy laws. It also provides individuals who may be considering bankruptcy with a basic explanation of the different chapters under which a bankruptcy case may be filed and answers some of the most commonly asked questions about the bankruptcy process.

In 2005, the Bankruptcy Code was amended to require that most individual debtors complete a special briefing from an approved credit counseling agency before filing a bankruptcy case. In most states, the United States trustee is responsible for approving the providers that offer this special pre-bankruptcy briefing, and maintains a list of approved providers. In the six districts located in Alabama and North Carolina, providers are approved by the bankruptcy administrator assigned to the district. Contact information for approved providers in those states can be obtained from the district's bankruptcy administrator or from the bankruptcy court.