If you have experienced increased expenses, reduced income, or other hardship and are having trouble making your mortgage payment, you are not necessarily doomed to the devastation of foreclosure. Here are six options you may have to keep your house, if you cannot make your current mortgage payments, are about to default on your mortgage, or feel like you are going into “pre-foreclosure” status:

1. Refinance: You simply get a new mortgage loan and pay off your old (unaffordable) loan with the new one.

2. Repayment Plan: You work with your lender on structuring a repayment plan you can live with – one that lets you catch up on your missed payments by paying more than one full payment per month until you are current on your mortgage.

3. Forbearance Program: You work with your lender to delay or to suspend all (or a part) of your normal monthly payment for an agreed-upon period of time. You may roll the “suspended” payments into the existing mortgage loan, or you may make those payments as part of a repayment plan or loan modification, as agreed between you and your bank(s).

4. Loan Modification: You work with your lender to change the original terms of your mortgage loan. You may be able to change your interest rate, the duration of the loan, or the amount of the loan (adjusted by the amount that you are behind in paying).

5. Short Refinance: You work with your lender to obtain an adjustment or “forgiveness” of the actual principal portion of the balance. This may be used with Forbearance and Repayment Plans.

6. Short Sale: Simply put, it is when a lender will agree to accept an amount which is less than what is actually owed on the property. A short sale is a normal (actually nothing “normal” about a short sale) purchase and sale transaction, however the lender is receiving a payoff which is “short” of the total amount owed. Hence, the term “short sale.”

7. Bankruptcy: You may change your original terms of your mortgage loan as part of a bankruptcy filing, order, reorganization, or repayment plan.

All of these methods require you to be able to make a payment that the Bank agrees with and to make it on-time every month.

If you have encountered a hardship, income reduction, or increase in expenses that prohibits you from participating successfully in any of these programs or that will simply delay the inevitability of foreclosure because you’re actually unable to make acceptable payments, even under modification or other attempt to adjust your mortgage burden, you may need to consider a Short Sale to escape foreclosure and its devastating effects on your life.

For more information on what a Short Sale is and how it can help you or other foreclosure options, please feel free to call (336) 462-9544 for a free consultation or email: info@exitelitenc.com

Tony Green, Realtor and Broker/Owner of EXIT Realty Elite in Winston Salem, NC has helped several home owners avoid foreclosure through the options listed above.