Few things are more devastating to families than the prospect of foreclosure. You own your home and you love it — it serves you well. Yet, due to unfortunate circumstances, foreclosure may seem imminent.
For local Texas families facing foreclosure, the stress can be almost unbearable. Worse yet, the foreclosure process can take months or even years, stretching out the pain for longer than anyone wants.
Fortunately, you have options available to you here in Texas — perhaps more options than you realize. There are many strategies that help for foreclosure in Fort Worth; these are legal foreclosure avoidance strategies you can implement to help you resolve your foreclosure issue so you can get on with your life.
In this blog post, you’ll read about 3 ways that you can avoid foreclosure (there are other ways to avoid foreclosure as well). The goal of these strategies is to help you legally and ethically avoid foreclosure and reducing the pain and frustration that you’re facing, while minimizing any long-term financial commitment or burden to you. Not all of these strategies will apply in every situation but you’ll probably be able to find at least one of the three ways that will work for you.
Strategy #1: Work out a deal with your lender
The first strategy is called a “foreclosure workout”. In a foreclosure workout, you’ll sit down with your lender and tell them that you don’t think you can pay your current mortgage obligation but you’d like to figure something out so you can stay in your house and continue to pay your mortgage.
Contrary to popular belief, lenders don’t want to foreclose! They want happy customers who pay their mortgages, so lenders are often willing to work with homeowners to figure out a deal. This might include a temporary reprieve on your mortgage payments, or it might include a catch-up strategy where your outstanding mortgage payments are spread out so you can catch-up and pay them off, or it might include a restructuring of the outstanding amounts that you owe.
Strategy #2. Bankruptcy
Filing for bankruptcy may seem like an extreme measure but it is one of the “tools” in your foreclosure avoidance toolbelt. When you file for bankruptcy, you indicate to all of your creditors that you are no longer able to pay your bills. Filing for bankruptcy will put a stop to the foreclosure process because all creditors must stop the collection process.
Filing for bankruptcy, though, is a little extreme: it may require you to sell off some of your assets in order to pay off your creditors. And, a bankruptcy will remain on your credit score for many years, which could impact everything from getting a loan to getting a car… even getting a job. So this shouldn’t be your first line of defense!
Strategy #3. Short sale help for a foreclosure in Fort Worth
A short sale is the third strategy — this is where you sell your home and put the proceeds of the sale toward the amount owing on your mortgage loan. A short sale is a preferred method for people facing foreclosure because it is proactive, fast, and very effective.
- It’s proactive, which means that you take matters into your own hands (that’s a major stress eliminator because so much of the stress of foreclosure comes from the process being completely out of your control).
- It’s fast — in some cases, you can sell your home in as little as a week! That’s also because it’s local: You can get help for foreclosure in Fort Worth since organizations like Sell Your House DFW help people going through short sales.
- It’s very effective because a short sale can completely wipe out (or almost wipe out) the amount owing on your mortgage. If there is any amount left over that is not covered by the sale of the property, you’ll be responsible for it (although you can sometimes work out a deal with your lender).
With a short sale, you still end up with the reality of having to leave your home but there is a bright side: The impact to your credit is much less (compared to a bankruptcy or a foreclosure) so this is a smart long-term play to give yourself some options.
If you find that you’d love to sell your house to get out from under your Texas foreclosure…
Give us a call today at (817-438-6822) or click here to fill out the form and we’d like to make you a fair all-cash offer on your house.
Video Transcription
Speaker 1: Hey, guys. This is Brian with Sell Your House DFW. It’s a beautiful day out here in Fort Worth, and we are at a house that we just bought here in the east side of Fort Worth in the historical Ryanwood subdivision. What’s makes this house cool is it’s only two blocks away from my mother’s house here in Fort Worth.
I just want to tell you a little bit about the situation here with this house. The owners live in Georgia, and they had, a couple of years ago, they couldn’t pay their mortgage payment. They were falling behind on it so what they did was rent it out to some family members, and the family members have been living here and caught them up on the mortgage and everything, but those family members are now moving out to Sulphur Springs. They contacted me and said, “Hey, we’re kind of in a bind. We don’t have any tenants here. We just want to be done with it. The house needs a lot of work, and we’re not going to be able to afford the mortgage payment on it, so wanted to see if you can help us out.”
I came and looked at the house. It does need a lot of work. They did some interior stuff to the house that we’re going to have to fix and stuff, but overall, it’s not that bad, and we were able to make an offer and purchase the house and help these guys out.
That’s just one example of this, all the reasons people sell. Every house we do, it seems to be a little bit different. There’s hundreds of reasons people need to sell, and usually, we can find a way to help them. I just wanted to share that with you guys. Hope you guys have a blessed day, and we’ll see you.