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Mortgage Payment Behind? What to do when you Mortgage Payment is Behind

Mortgage Payment Behind?

Each year thousands of homeowners mortgage payments get behind because of job loss, divorce illness. Avoid foreclosure and losing your home with some tips during this period. First the most important thing is to take action as soon as possible.

The single most important thing you can do if your mortgage payment is behind is communicate with your mortgage lender. They will usually begin calling you once you have missed the first "grace period" of your mortgage payment. Do not avoid their calls. It is best to openly communicate with them and explain your current (and hopefully temporary) situation.

Once your mortgage payment is behind, the mortgage lender can elect not to accept partial payments of the mortgage payments your are behind and outstanding.

For example: say you owe $1,900 and you miss a mortgage payment, you are now 30 days behind, so the following month you need to have $1,900 + $1,900 from the month before + the typical 5% late fee, $95 for a total of $3,895. If you send less than the total amount, the mortgage lender may send you back the partial payment until you are able to send the entire amount owed.

Also once you have a single mortgage payment late on you credit report, your credit score will drop dramatically, which may affect you ability to refinance your mortgage if you get too far behind. According to Fair Issac Corp which created the FICO score model, a late mortgage payment one of the largest "hits" that drops your credit score.

This is way it is so important to communicate with your mortgage lender. If you communicate with them you can set-up a partial mortgage payment plan early to try and get current of your mortgage payments and if you are lucky avoid the late mortgage payment from being indicated on your credit report.

If within 120 days your are unable to get current on the total amount of late mortgage payments, your mortgage lender may elect to being the foreclosure process on your home by filing a "Notice of Default".

Once a notice of default has being filed, you have exactly 3 months to bring the mortgage payments current and now the amount your are behind on your mortgage payments will go up as the mortgage lender will assesses the legal fee's of filing the notice of default to the amount owed.

Three months after the notice of default, if you are still behind on your mortgage payments the lender can file a "Notice of Sale" which is the final step to foreclosure. At this point, you have only three weeks to bring the entire amount owed. On the 21st. day the mortgage lender will hold an auction for your property and you will lose your home to foreclosure and be evicted.

As you can see it is very important to take immediate action before you are behind on your mortgage payments.

What are Your Options once Your Mortgage Payments are Behind

Once you mortgage payment is behind you only a few options.

Contact Your Mortgage Lender. Let you mortgage lender know way you are behind on your mortgage payment. A mistake most individuals make is to not talk to their mortgage lender to explain their situation once they are getting behind. The more cooperative you are upfront the better chance you can work it out with them. You should be calling the first moment you know you may get behind on the mortgage payment.

Get Current on Mortgage Payments You Are Behind. Try to get money together as soon as possible to bring the mortgage payments current. Be sure to call your lender and ask for a current amount owed before mailing your payment as you do not want the mortgage lender to send it back because you only sent a partial payment. If you think you cannot get current within the first thirty days and the mortgage lender is not willing to work out a mortgage repayment plan, you should look into a mortgage refinance.

Mortgage refinance. You may try to refinance your mortgage to bring it current and and pay-off the lender. If you do not have "reserves" you should consider getting cash-out to insure you do not get into the same situation within a few months, especially if you know your financial situation is not changing. You may do this assuming you credit score is still high enough and you have enough equity in your home.

Sell Home. If you are unable to do a mortgage refinance to bring the mortgage payments current you should seriously consider selling the home before going to foreclosure. Late mortgage payments reflected on your credit report will only be shown for 7 years. This is important because if you “net” enough money from the sale of the home, you can use that to rent another home for a period of time until you get back on your feet and then purchase another home because your credit report will still be o.k.

If you go through the foreclosure process that will stay on your credit report for 10 years and you will have difficulty buying a home for up to five years after the foreclosure (without a large down payment).

We hope that you find this information regarding being behind on your mortgage payments useful. If you need help have questions or comments, please feel free to contact us at: (800) 931-7377 or via email.

Disclosure. The information is based on the California foreclosure proceedings. This information is provided for you use. It is not legal advice and we are not responsible for any damages incurred from the information contained within the article.

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