You’ve had more than your share of difficulties in the last few months. You’ve lost a loved one or been through a difficult divorce. You’ve lost a job or had to change jobs. You’ve lost your health and have medical expenses stacking up. Maybe you’re struggling with increased utility prices or fuel expenses or an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) that is unbearable. Perhaps, your property tax bill has gone through the roof.

Unfortunately, while you’re worrying about stopping foreclosure of your home, you’re bombarded with letters, postcards, phone calls and strangers driving by and knocking on your door.

These foreclosure investors specialize in chasing homeowners just like you who are close to losing their homes. They’re interested in buying your home and profiting from it, because they believe you must sell the home.

Should you sell to an investor to avoid being foreclosed on? Maybe, but certainly not as your first option. And only after you exhausted other foreclosure prevention means such as rearranging your loan.

One of the Solutions To Stop Foreclosure Is Lender Mediation

If you have missed a few payments, your credit score will drop dramatically; once this data is on your credit report, it will be difficult if not impossible to get a new loan to refinance your existing mortgage.

Every mortgage lender in the country has a Loss Mitigation department established with the sole purpose of reducing lender’s losses on loans. They work to put homeowners who fell behind on payments on a repayment plan to bring your loan out of default. The best thing about Loss Mitigation alternative is, unlike a new loan, it doesn’t require a credit approval.

If You Do Get a Workout Plan, Beware of the Challenges

Loss Mitigation departments are lightly staffed. One of the biggest problems with workout plans is caused by employee overload. At time of high default rates, like we’re experiencing now, the employees have too many files to work on. And they have a limited time to process each case. The result is, the lender offers you a ‘canned’ repayment plan that has too short of a ‘catch up’ time and too large of monthly payment increase that is not realistic for your budget to sustain.

Because you’re between a rock and a hard place you’re tempted to take it to keep your home from being foreclosed on. In reality you just set yourself up for a failure. A few months down the stretch, you’ll be back in foreclosure again.

Stop Foreclosure By Hiring Foreclosure Workout Companies

One of the simplest, yet little known ways to get a lot better outcome through the Loss Mitigation process is to hire an experienced professional to do the work for you. These are companies that have experience of negotiating literally thousands of workout cases for owners in default. Some have established working relationships with the Loss Mitigation departments of many mortgage lenders nationwide.

These companies will look over your finances and help you come up with a repayment schedule, which is possible for you to meet; payments will be kept as low as possible to make it easier for you to make your payments. These companies have intimate knowledge of the programs offered by different lenders and can negotiate a better deal for you than you would be offered by the lender on your own. They may even be able to negotiate a lower interest rate on your mortgage, which will lower your payments.

You may think in you current circumstances hiring a company like this could be prohibitively expensive. Not so. Most charge a reasonable flat fee equal to a single monthly mortgage payment. You’ll easily get your money back through a negotiated for you deferral of the next loan payment.

How to Cut Your Losses if Loss Mitigation is Not in Your Plans

If the lender mediation process won’t work for you, then you will need to sell your home to keep from having a foreclosure record on your credit report. If there is enough time before foreclosure, you best bet is to list your home with a realtor, this will let you get a better price for your home. If your foreclosure is imminent, however, you may have no alternative but to sell to an investor. These companies can buy your home quickly, just make sure that they have the means to close the deal quickly, before your home goes into foreclosure.

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