Hope for Homeowner Options

Since we addressed that Hope for Homeowners will not help the vast majority in this blog.

Here are some alternative options for those that need help.

1. Try to get a regular FHA refinance. If you are still current this may be the best route. Even if you owe more on your home than it is worth presently, we have had great success in getting the lenders to take "short" payoffs. Some lenders will roll the deficiency into a personal loan, but this is still better because most of your debt will be at much better terms and in a financial crisis you can let the personal debt go without it impacting you as much as losing your home.
   
2. If you are currently behind, there are two potential options.
   
   1. A Chapter 13 bankruptcy. If you qualify for this route, your debts are reorganized, giving you payments based on your income. This allows the arrearage for your mortgage to be put into the bankruptcy. So now you will either have two payments, one to the trustee and one to the mortgage company OR just one to the trustee and they will pay your mortgage. If you pay on time for over a year, you may even qualify for a refinance on your mortgage with an FHA loan. You must have ZERO late payments over that time frame and fulfill other qualifications.
      
   2. An attorney based loan modification. As much as the non-profits claim you can do this for free, paying an attorney who specializes in this is a far more efficient way to get one done, with much better terms for you. We have had a HUD counselor call us in the past asking US how to help a person.
      

      
       

      Why an attorney negotiating on your behalf works better is because the lender does not want a lawsuit. If the lender is unwilling to co-operate then the attorney does a forensic audit on your loan papers looking for RESPA violations. They then go back to your lender and say, "if you don't help this client, we will sue you for all of these violations." This works MUCH better than hoping your lender will be nice. You can go here to fill out a form to see if you would qualify for a loan modification. The attorney's know which cases have a high likelihood of success, so they do a FREE pre-qualification first before they go forward with the modification process.