Summer is meant to be a time for relaxation—but if you’re behind on mortgage payments or have received a foreclosure notice, it can feel like the walls are closing in. The good news is: foreclosure is not the end of the road. You have options—and the sooner you act, the more of them you’ll have.
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A successful relationship between a client and a law firm requires both parties to do their job. The firm may have the most work to do, but there are some things that only the client can do. Even the greatest attorney in the world can't get you what you want if you're not playing ball.
If you hire our law firm, take the steps below to ensure that you have the best relationship with us and the highest chance of getting the outcome you want.
1. Add our phone numbers to your contacts and return our calls.
Have you ever received a call from an unknown number and not answered it because you assumed that if the caller was important to you, you'd already have their number saved in your phone? Probably a telemarketer, you figured. Then you get a voice mail and realize that the caller was someone very important to you, but you didn't add their number to your contacts yet. Crap!
Don't let that happen with a call from your lawyer. Add our number to your contacts and answer when we call you -- it's probably important. If you're a client of our firm, you will be getting calls from 877-882-5338 and 866-558-2408. You might also want to add your paralegal's direct fax number, so you have it handy while you're doing #3 below.
A loan modification can allow you to keep your home and avoid foreclosure after falling behind on your mortgage, but it's not necessarily all roses. In fact, there are some downsides to loan mods that your lender may not go out of their way tell you about.
If you don't know, a loan modification is a permanent change to one or more of the terms of your mortgage, such as the term, interest rate, and monthly payment.
A loan modification is often the only hope many homeowners have to keep their home following a default. They can be great, however if you need one, you should be aware of the following:
Here are just a few of the things I overheard last week:
- "Wells Fargo gave me a 3 month forbearance, I don't need to make any payments."
- "If they can't foreclose, why should I make my mortgage payments?"
- "Mr. Cooper is letting me skip three mortgage payments, I ordered new patio furniture."
How would you respond to each of these? Let's take a look.
Mr. Cooper Loan Modification
We received a modification for our client's mortgage with Mr. Cooper. They were 10 months behind, and in an active foreclosure case. This new modification lowers their mortgage payments from $803.82 per month to $743.64.
Do you have a Mr. Cooper mortgage that's past due? See some of our other Mr. Cooper case results here.
Only if you have to.
Our attorneys' COVID-19 advice:
- If you can afford to keep paying your mortgage during a hardship caused by Coronavirus, keep paying your mortgage.
- If you cannot afford to make your mortgage payments, our lawyers want to do everything possible to help you understand your options and be protected from your bank's misrepresentations.
Q: Why?
A: Because in our experience, most mortgage "disaster relief" becomes a nightmare.
We would like to apologize in advance for the possible delay in our response time while we prepare ourselves for the approach of Hurricane Dorian.
Our office will be closed on Monday for Labor Day, and office is tentatively open on Tuesday, September 3rd, but will be monitoring the hurricane closely and will keep you updated. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for news.Clients: Please be advised that we have made arrangements for ALL upcoming hearings and urgent matters in the next two weeks. If our office loses power or our phone lines in the coming days you can always log in to your case.
If you are in foreclosure in a judicial foreclosure state, your case can "go to trial."
Some homeowners think they want to go to trial to have their day in court, a chance to tell their story to a judge or jury and get justice. However, real life is not like an episode of a legal drama show. There will be no sensational surprise at the end, and probably not much of anything exciting. And even if you do win, you will not get a free house.
In many cases, it makes sense to avoid going to trial because it's better to come to an agreement with the lender before it gets to that point. But sometimes that's not practical, and a case does end up at trial.
If you tell people that you're trying to get a loan modification to avoid foreclosure and keep your home, inevitably some of them will offer advice, whether they know what they're talking about or not.
Acting on bad guidance for something so important can be harmful to your chances of getting the outcome you want.
Here's some of the worst advice we've heard about loan modifications and foreclosure:
"Stop paying your mortgage to get a loan mod"
Homeowners who are current on their mortgage have been told that they need to stop paying their mortgage to be eligible for a loan modification.
This is wrong.
You do need to show that you've had a hardship that's making it hard to afford your mortgage, but you do not have to be in default to get a loan modification.
Disclaimer: These results should not be taken as a guarantee, as each case is unique. We have helped over 7,000 homeowners. Here are some of their stories.
Every week we obtain loan modifications for our clients with a variety of loan servicers. You can see these results as they are announced on Twitter (#loanmodwow) or Facebook. Here are some of our results from this week with Freedom, Seterus, Wells Fargo and SPS:
