Peter Baptiste is known as the Foreclosure Doctor Online. Feel free to visit his blog where he provides a wealth of information on a regular basis. The Foreclosure Doctor Online
Archive for Loss Mitigation
11 Top Strategies for Selling Your House to Stop Foreclosure
Posted by: | CommentsAvoid Foreclosure San Diego
Dealing with foreclosure can be so frustrating, no matter what the reason may be. You know you’re going to lose your home if you don’t do something. Well, in order to stop foreclosure, one option that you have it to sell your home as fast as possible. Of course in a fairly slow housing market, selling fast can be difficult. So, here are a few top strategies to help you sell your home to stop foreclosure as fast as you can.
Strategy #1 – Paint Your Walls a Neutral Color – One of the best things you can do if you want to make your home sell fast is to make sure that all the walls in your home are painted in a neutral color. If you have eclectic colors on the walls, some people may be scared off, and the last thing they’ll want to do is have to pain when they move in. So, painting with neutral colors can help.
Strategy #2 – Clean all the Appliances – You’ll want your appliances to look clean. So, make sure to clean them up before anyone takes a look at the home. If your appliances do not match, you may want to consider hiring someone to paint them all the same color. This will increase potential buyers’ interest in your kitchen.
Strategy #3 – Get the Carpets Cleaned – Carpets often get stained, especially lighter carpets. So, to keep them looking great so potential buyers are not scared off, make sure you have them cleaned before you start showing your home.
Strategy #4 – Clean Out the Pool – The last thing people want to see when they come to your home is a pool that looks nasty. So, you’ll need to clean out the pool. If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, consider hiring someone to come do it for you so it is clean and looking great. This will definitely help you sell your home a whole lot faster.
Strategy #5 – Make Sure There is Plenty of Light – Lighting is important in your home. If there is not enough light, it can look small and depressing. However, a lot of light can really help to make the home look great and can also make it look bigger. So, make sure you open the blinds or turn lights on if you really want to sell.
Strategy #6 – Get Rid of Clutter – When people are looking at homes, they want to envision how your home is going to look if they move in. The last thing they want to see is all your clutter around. If the room is cluttered, get rid of some furniture, get rid of pictures on the walls, which will allow the place to look more spacious and attractive.
Strategy #7 – Enhance the Curb Appeal of the Home – Curb appeal is so important if you’re trying to sell your home fast to stop foreclosure. This is what people see when they first drive up to your home and that first look is going to be so important. Make sure that the lawn is cut, the landscaping is nice, and that the front door looks good as well.
Strategy #8 – Make Sure the Home Smells Great – Smells can really make a difference to whether or not you are able to sell your home quickly. If your home has some bad smells in it, people may be turned off. So, spray some nice air fresheners or do some baking to make the entire home smell great so people will love the way that it smells.
Strategy #9 – Keep Closets Empty if Possible – Start cleaning out those closets so they are empty if you can. No one likes to look in a closet that is full of junk. When the closets are all cleaned out, they look more spacious as well, which is a big selling point with many buyers.
Strategy #10 – Clean and Organize Your Garage – People love having a big garage for storage or for their car. So, if you want to sell your home fast, you’ll need to clean and organize the garage. Clean out all the junk, make it look clean, and get everything out of it that you can so it looks great.
Strategy #11 – Be Sure Your Home is Priced Right – Probably one of the most important strategies for selling your house to stop foreclosure fast is to make sure that your home is priced right. If the home is too expensive, it is not going to sell, especially on the market today. So, make sure that you find out what the best price is for your home and use it to make sure you actually can sell the home as fast as possible to stop the foreclosure process.
How To Avoid Foreclosure San Diego
Loss Mitigation – a Set of Tools to Stop Foreclosure
Posted by: | CommentsAvoid Foreclosure San Diego
What is loss mitigation?
You can be sure that there are a lot of people who do not have the faintest idea what this expression means. For that matter, there are a lot of terms in the finance field that are rarely used by most people in everyday conversation.
If you are now facing a home foreclosure, you are looking for answers-
answers that will explain what all this “foreclosure” terminology, means in simple-to-understand words. Rather than define all these confusing financial terms at once, let’s look at loss mitigation and explain how it may be a “weapon” that you can use to defeat your home foreclosure. Loss Mitigation…
A course of action that is available to you, the homeowner, and a process that will enable you to stop home foreclosure. That is correct; you the homeowner have the power to request negotiations with the lender.(Imagine that)
Not only can it stop the foreclosure process, but it can help you save your family home and the equity you have built up. The lender agrees to assist the borrower (you) by working out an agreement to help you stay in your home and restructure your loan payments. Loss mitigation is a set of tools the lender uses to stop foreclosure.
Which could include:
> Special forbearance agreement
> Loan modification / Mortgage Refinance
> Partial claim
> Pre-foreclosure sale
> Deed-in-lieu of Foreclosure
An agreement between the lender and homeowner to repay past due payments within an agreed upon period of time is the goal of loss mitigation.
Any of the previously mentioned tools or combination of each can be used by the lender to enforce the agreement.Your current situation…
Your current situation is important in the process, because you are now behind on payments and in danger of defaulting on your home loan. This information needs to be very clearly and succinctly described to the lender. Communication with your lenders is very important.
Do not hesitate to tell your lender all the facts. When they understand your situation completely, your lender will be more able to help you find the right solution.
You must remember this is business and the lender will approach the negotiations that way. Your job is to put a face/family in front of them and make sure they understand the situation you are facing. If you have recently faced any hardships such as:
> being laid off at work
> going through a divorce
> medical bills
> health issues – resulting in loss of income
The lender MUST know this information.
These few are just examples of what the lender will take into consideration when trying to help you stop the foreclosure process. Your hardship and financial circumstances will be taken into consideration.The negotiations…
The outcome of the negotiations usually results in your existing loan being re-established or modified to some degree. Loss mitigation does not involve you losing your home or the equity you have accrued. In addition loss mitigation is not dependant on your credit rating.There is help…
As stated earlier loss mitigation is a process available to you. That does not mean that you have to go into your lender alone. In fact if you use a reputable firm, your chances of negotiating with your lender (to benefit you) elevate significantly.
This is not a game; you are facing the possibility of losing your home to foreclosure. Be sure you check out the company before you consider using them. You definitely want to work with a reputable establishment.
The loss mitigation firm will work with you to customize a plan that will fit your individual circumstances.The benefits of loss mitigation negotiations…
It is a process that you and your lender enter into. This course of action is meant to cut the losses incurred by both parties. If the lender has to foreclose on your property it actually will cost
them more than taking time to work out a solution with you NOW!
You keep your home and equity, and the lender has halted the foreclosure process and has an agreement with you to continue your (altered) mortgage payments.One final point…
You must always remember when you are facing a home foreclosure that time is your enemy. The clock is always running. Even while you are
negotiating with your lender…the clock never stops ticking.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…
The best of luck during your Loss Mitigation negotiations.
Jeff Manzanares is the president / owner of Bridges Finance Inc. a finance companay in Orange County CA. Jeff is also owner of Home Foreclosure Help a website dedicated to helping a homeowner keep their home when they are facing foreclosure.
How To Avoid Foreclosure San Diego
5 Secrets to Effectively Stop Foreclosure
Posted by: | CommentsAvoid Foreclosure San Diego
Stopping a home from foreclosure is the most difficult situation homeowners have ever faced in United States history. Not only do you have to stop your foreclosure, but you also have to contend with that mortgage pre-payment penalty, tarnished credit, a contracting mortgage market and the adjustable rate mortgage that is coming due. It has never been more difficult to stop your foreclosure.
We are finding homeowners who were previously in foreclosure actually going back into foreclosure because they did not address all five areas of correctly stopping the foreclosure. Most homeowners for the most part are unaware of the guidelines to these unfamiliar programs and tell lenders what they think they want to hear. It’s the lenders job to collect money not properly guide you to all the facts. Mortgage companies have a fiduciary responsibility to stockholders to collect money and pay dividends, not to befriend you.
The process of stopping foreclosure is called loss mitigation. Since foreclosures are legal issues printed in local newspapers, homeowners will typically find some interesting folks drawn to their ‘foreclosure opportunity’. Fifty or more so called experts and attorneys will write to say that they can help or bankruptcy is the only way to save their home. Forget that bankruptcies commonly fail but all those so called experts, if they really can help, only stop the foreclosure process and don’t address your whole problem.
Finding the right ‘Loss Mitigation’ expert is the same as working with other professions people commonly use. If you break your foot, you go to a podiatrist. If you get sued, you retain an attorney. If you had a brain problem, you would seek out the best neurosurgeon that would take care of one of the most important parts of your body. Well correctly stopping the foreclosure process and retaining the largest financial investment most people have, is no different. Skilled loss mitigation specialist will cover everything you may or may not have thought about during these trying times.
Stop The Foreclosure. Obviously, this must be addressed and ‘how do we actually stop the foreclosure?’. Lenders may offer a solution directly to a home owner but it is designed with the banks best interest in mind and frequently requires borrowers to meet impossible underwriting guidelines. Typically they approve plans that are outside a home owner’s budget. “The trick is to force the lender to approve a plan that is in the best interest of the home owner and their ability to pay their mortgage”. Homeowners need to locate trustworthy representation. The majority of homeowners are able to solve their financial troubles in a relatively short time. They frequently can handle their bills but are $10,000 to $30,000 behind on their home loan and their lender won’t take partial payments. Often times, they have saved some money from the nonpayment but still are losing their home. We find that if the hardship that caused the mortgage delinquency has been resolved and with a professionally designed plan of action, it is very possible for us to stop foreclosure.
Adjustable Rate Mortgage Are The Secret Killers After You Stop A Foreclosure. Wow, can we say anymore? The largest cause of the current foreclosure dilemma is adjustable rate mortgages that are coming due and they are adjusting. Not only are they are real problem but the also adjust annually so every year you will have to contend with, “Can I afford my home next year?” The continual stress is not good. High profile loss mitigation specialists will not only address this with the lender but they will also negotiate to lock you into a fixed rate mortgage, often at better mortgage rates than you had before!
How Does A Contracting Mortgage Market Affect You? Since late 2006, over 110 mortgage lenders went out of business and another 60+ were acquired by larger mortgage companies. The problems are even larger than that. Just look at all problems on Wall Street with the companies that dealt with the subprime mortgage market. Billion dollar companies that are now considered worthless because of the subprime mortgage market. The point to this is simple. Subprime mortgages that help people with bad credit are a thing of the past. If you have a foreclosure process you are facing, no matter what credit you had at one time, now you are bad credit and nobody wants that mortgage. Only credit repair and years of consistent new and good credit will fax this. This is another reason that you must have your mortgage interest rate and term addressed at this time.
Why Is Your Credit Important? As just mentioned, no lender wants to offer mortgages to people with bad credit, regardless of the reasons for it. Mortgage companies are running scared. You need to be aware of the fact that your credit will be damaged for years.
You Have To Address Prepayment Penalties. Even if you found a lender that might offer you a mortgage, homeowners that have prepayment penalties are finding that a refinance will gobble up 5% of the loan balance. Homeowners that are facing a foreclosure have obviously experienced previous financial stress, a new lender will charge 3 to 5 points and paying that 5% prepayment penalty will consume a large chunk of your equity. Refinancing is definitely not the best option in most cases.
Typically, we discover that the banks policies differ from what the laws state. Banks may offer to make a deal with you, but those deals favor themselves and they request more money than you can afford or more than they really will accept. Homeowners are new to the foreclosure process and they usually do not make their best case. It appears that many banks take advantage of the fact that most homeowners are unaware of the foreclosure process.”
The clear choice when confronted with a home foreclosure is to leverage the years of experience that a professional Loss Mitigation Specialist has. In addition, it is important to remember that this is the least stressful and most cost effective option. In fact, a good specialist will not charge for the first consultation. This will allow a specialist the opportunity to see if the homeowner is a candidate for the program. The vast understanding and skill set of a professional typically assists homeowners out of foreclosure 98% off the time with all five of the most important addressed and positioned for a successful recovery.
Scott Pasinski has been a professional mortgage consultant for eight years and specializes in how to stop foreclosure. Every person and their mortgage are as unique as a finger print. Scott also writes for Consumer Mortgage Reports and working with the largest mortgage broker in the United States. This industry positioning allows Scott to have access to virtually every mortgage product available with the best mortgage rates in the United States.
How To Avoid Foreclosure San Diego