If you accepted your mortgage lender's offer to suspend your house payments so you could get back on your feet after a hurricane, you may have found that their help actually put you at risk of foreclosure. Hurricane Irma, as well as Harvey and Maria, caused damage that led some homeowners to wind up in that situation.

Many homeowners accepted their lender's offer without knowing exactly what kind of help they were getting and what the consequences of that help would be. There are also cases of the bank saying one thing and doing another.

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Let's take a look at two of the main ways mortgage payments can be suspended and repaid following a disaster:

Forbearance

A forbearance is when a lender temporarily suspends your payments so you can avoid falling behind on your loan for a period of time until your hardship is over. After it's over, all the missed payments typically have to be paid back in one lump sum.

It's great to have your bank's permission to not make some payments if you have an emergency and need to spend your money on other things. But, if your money is tight enough to need a forbearance, how are you going to afford to pay back 3, 6, or 12 missed payments in one fell swoop? That's why a forbearance is so dangerous. If you're at the end of your forbearance period and can't pay the money back and the bank won't give you a repayment plan, you could end up in foreclosure.

2017's hurricanes are long gone, but some homeowners affected by Irma, Harvey, and Maria are trying to avoid foreclosure after their bank-approved forbearance caused them to end up in foreclosure.

How could that be?

Hurricane Hardships

When hurricane Irma tore through Florida, it knocked out power and damaged property. A lot of people missed work and had to spend extra money on things like home repairs, replacement groceries, fuel for a generator, or a hotel. All the extra expenses made it hard or impossible to pay the mortgage.

Fortunately, many banks offered some assistance to homeowners going through a hurricane-related hardship. Unfortunately, after that temporary assistance ended, some homeowners are finding themselves worse off than before.

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 Nationstar, Selene, MGC Mortgage, Carrington, 21st Mortgage, and Mr Cooper:

Selene

Our Selene clients were more than 5 years (61 months) and $134,138 + fees past due on their mortgage and foreclosure was started, but we helped them get a 6 month in-house trial loan modification plan with $92,752.42 deferred interest free and a fresh start!

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 Flagstar, Gregory Funding, Wells Fargo, Ocwen, and Caliber:

Gregory Funding

Our Gregory Funding client was $10,719.62 past due on his mortgage, but we helped him get a final loan modification with massive $358.01 savings on his monthly payment!

It seemed like a great deal at the time: listen to a 90-minute sales pitch on timeshares and get a free gift worth $100 or more. No commitment to buy anything. You knew there was no way you were going to buy. You just wanted to get the gift and leave. What's the harm in listening to the sales presentation?

Two hours later you somehow bought a timeshare. High-pressure sales tactics had your head spinning, all the numbers that were thrown at you began to make sense, and the spiel from multiple well-trained salespeople convinced you that owning a timeshare isn't just a better way to take vacations, it's also makes financial sense.

But many of the things timeshare salespeople tell you during their presentation aren't 100% true. It may be timeshare fraud. Here are some of the common false promises and/or sleazy sales tactics used by timeshare salespeople:

1. The presentation lasts longer than they promised.

Your are lured into the timeshare sales pitch with the offer of a free gift and the promise that the presentation will only last an hour and a half, but often it lasts two hours or more! (Parents and children are separated during the presentation, and sometimes alcohol is served.) The timeshare salespeople know that your willpower is not infinite. The longer they can keep you listening to them, the more likely you are to buy from them. People often say they felt trapped in these presentations and did something they wouldn't otherwise have done.

Amerihope Alliance Legal Services recently helped a client get $12,842.42 in surplus funds after his property was sold in a foreclosure auction. To protect his privacy I'll call this client Mr. Sebben.

Mr. Sebben's mortgage problems came about because he wasn't able to sell his Broward County, Florida home before moving out of state for work. Unable to pay for housing in two states, he stopped paying the mortgage on his vacant Florida home and his lender, Suntrust, started foreclosure on it.

Mr. Sebben realized that he needed professional help, and so he retained our firm in 2016 to help him stay a bit longer in the property and deal with the foreclosure case.

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 Mortgage, Carrington, Wells Fargo, Capital One, Ditech, and Bayview:

Freedom Mortgage

Our Freedom Mortgage client was 8 months and $15,334 past due on his mortgage, but now he has an FHA loan modification with $32.22 cheaper monthly payment!

March 2018 Update: If your lender is calling you regarding delinquent payments after making you an offer of assistance, act immediately. We have been contacted by several homeowners who have received foreclosure notices after believing their lender or servicer had granted them relief.

Temporary mortgage assistance has been made available to homeowners in parts of the country that were declared disaster areas as a result of 2017's major hurricanes, including Hurricane Irma in Florida, Harvey in Texas, and Maria in Puerto Rico. That help is much needed for many people, but what happens when the relief ends?

After getting some kind of assistance, you and your mortgage could end up in better shape, but you could also find that your problems are worse. It all depends on your situation and what kind of assistance you get. So it's important to understand what you're getting into.

Let's take a look at some of the assistance available.

What happens when your mortgage servicer changes in the middle of making trial loan modification payments? Do you have to start the process all over again, or does your old agreement transfer to the new servicer?

First, let's define what we're talking about. A mortgage servicer is the company that accepts your house payment and credits your account. They're the accounts receivable department for your mortgage.

Your servicer could be a big bank like Wells Fargo or a non-bank like Ocwen or SLS. Servicers are also involved in the foreclosure process and evaluating borrowers for loss mitigation options, such as a loan modification.

Servicing rights transfer from one company to another all the time, including in the middle of a trial loan modification. You, the borrower, have no say about it whatsoever.

A servicer change should be simple when the borrower is current on the loan, though servicers have been known to botch even that. But things can become complicated when the borrower is in default and working toward a loan modification to avoid foreclosure.

HAMP, the federal government's loan modification program, expired December 31, 2016, but we're still talking about it in 2018. Loan modifications remain a possibility for homeowners who need help avoiding foreclosure and keeping their home.

What Was HAMP?

In 2009, during the subprime mortgage crisis, foreclosures were happening at a rate not seen since the Great Depression. The Obama administration created HAMP to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure by modifying the terms of their loans to make them affordable.

HAMP provided guidelines for modifying mortgages and incentives for lenders to do so rather than foreclose. The program allowed for the term of the loan to be extended, the interest rate to be lowered, and the principal balance to be reduced or restructured so that the monthly mortgage payment was lowered to an affordable percentage of the borrower's current income.