August 2009

If you’re behind on your payments and facing a foreclosure, experts advise “ACT QUICKLY AND DON’T HESITATE ANOTHER MINUTE!” In Mississippi that’s really sound advice because once a lender decides to foreclose on your property it only takes them about 30 days to take your home. By law they can do it in 21 days. That doesn’t leave you much time at all. So in Mississippi you must ACT NOW or your home will be foreclosed on quickly and that foreclosure will negatively affect your credit rating for 10 years! Mortgage and credit experts say that, after bankruptcy, having a foreclosure on your credit report is the worst result and will reduce your credit score by over 250 points. You could also have to wait up to three years to qualify for a mortgage at a reasonable rate.

Life can be really challenging and there are many situations that cause good, hardworking families to go into foreclosure such as health problems, family death, rising mortgage payments, loss of job, divorce, medical bills to name a few. Prior to our current financial and credit crisis, the number one cause of foreclosures was health and medical problems.

Who We Are. MSHomeSolutions is a real estate investment and solutions company that specializes in working with families who are facing foreclosure. We work closely with homeowners like you to understand your situation and determine what options best fit your needs. We have experience and expertise solving difficult problems and we have helped many home owners who were in similar situations. In those cases where a homeowner wants to “SAVE MY HOME” and is financially capable we can work with the lender to negotiate an acceptable plan. In those cases where a homeowner is not financially capable of keeping their home or just wants to sell their home we can buy your home fast either outright or working with the lender to complete a short sale, take over the loan (even if there’s no equity), make up back payments, or come up with some other creative solution, including possibly giving you equity back out of your home. We serve Hattiesburg and the surrounding areas of Forrest and Lamar counties including Petal, Oak Grove, Purvis, Sumrall and many other areas throughout Mississippi.

If you are in a difficult situation now and are falling behind on your mortgage payments, and need help you can complete our Home Questionnaire and we would be happy to let you know what your options are. There’s no obligation or cost.

Whether your house is going to be auctioned off in a few days, or you just received your first notice from your lender, it is important for you to consider all your options and rights. For your help and convenience we have provided a summary of some of your options below.

Reinstatement Plan.
A reinstatement of your existing mortgage is to simply pay back the total amount your loan is behind by paying all of your back payments which may include monthly principal and interest, late fees and attorney fees to bring your loan current. By proving to your lender your ability to make up your back payments in one lump sum, your lender will usually reinstate the loan. Some possible sources of reinstatement money are retirement accounts, income tax returns, and close family members. NOTE: In situations where a homeowner comes up with the money to reinstate their loan, but nothing changes in the financial hardship that caused them to get behind in the first place, the homeowner is usually back in foreclosure within 6 months.

Workout Plan.
Your lender may consider a workout or repayment plan if you had a short term hardship that led to your financial difficulty. Basically, a workout plan lets you pay back the amount you’re behind, usually over 12-24 months plus your regular monthly payment. The lender will want you to pay some amount of your back payments upfront, usually about 25-50% of your total back payments. NOTE: Consider this option only if you can afford to pay more than your monthly mortgage payment, have upfront money to pay the 25-50% of your back payments now, and your financial hardship is short term. Beware if you are trying to negotiate your own workout plan. Our experience is that lenders are notorious for signing homeowners up to workout plans that put the homeowner into a worse financial situation that before and the homeowner is quickly back into foreclosure and out their upfront money.

Loan Modification.
In some cases a lender will allow you to restructure your loan which will stop the foreclosure process. A typical loan modification will add your back payments to the principal of the new loan. Loan modifications usually change your current interest rate and loan term so you can now afford the new monthly mortgage payment based on your new financial situation. NOTE: In most cases, you must qualify for a loan modification just like a new loan. Lenders are currently under pressure to perform more loan modifications to help homeowners avoid foreclosure today, but many lenders are telling homeowners that they don’t do them. It takes good negotiation skills to get a lender to do a loan modification and to negotiate terms that actually help the homeowner out of their financial difficulty.

Refinance.
Refinancing is a long term solution to stopping the foreclosure process. You must qualify for the new loan and depending on the financial difficulty that got you into this situation, that may not be possible. And, depending on your local real estate market and when you purchased your home, you may not have enough equity in your home to refinance. Get a recommendation from a friend or relative for a good mortgage broker or loan officer. A good mortgage broker will probably have more loan options. Typical costs for refinancing are 2-4% of the loan amount which pay for appraisal, lender commissions, recording paperwork, credit report, attorney fees, etc. NOTE: Stay away from pre-payment penalties and ARM’s (Adjustable Rate Mortgages), which got a lot of people into this mess to begin with.

Deed-In-Lieu Of Foreclosure.
A deed-in-lieu of foreclosure is where a lender agrees to take the property back, not foreclose and release you from the debt. You can only have one mortgage on your property. The property will need to be in good condition and lenders usually require you to have tried to sell your home. NOTE: In general, lenders do not like to take a property back and release you from your debt.

Sell Your Home.
If you are not financially able to keep your home and you don’t see any change in your current financial dilemma that would allow you to keep it with one of the above options, then the best option is to sell your house. Ray Martin, the CBS Early Show’s financial guru says “Lose the house, but not your credit.” If you can sell your home fast before your lender takes the property then do it. The impact of a foreclosure is great, especially if your goal is to be able to buy another home. The foreclosure shows up on your credit report as “debt discharged due to foreclosure” and will reduce your credit score by over 250 points and you may have to wait up to 3 years to qualify for a mortgage at a reasonable rate. Your options for selling your home are to list with a Realtor, sell it yourself as a for sale by owner (FSBO), or sell it to a professional real estate investor.

Selling through a Realtor is the traditional way that most people know how to sell their home. The difficulty in selling your home through a Realtor is that you need to sell your home fast and in today’s depressed market houses are sitting on the market month after month after month. You don’t have that much time. And in situations where a ‘Short Sale’ (See Short Sale below) is warranted, usually because of the lack of equity, the skills required to negotiate a successful short sale with a lender are usually opposite those of a Realtor.

Selling your home yourself offers the same set of problems as selling with a Realtor and also includes how you will market your property. A sign in the yard is one thing, but what about the cost of advertising in your local papers. You’ve got the get your home sold fast.

In order to sell your home fast, you should consider getting a free confidential no-obligation offer for your home from your professional real estate investor. Your professional “We Buy Houses” real estate investors are usually part of a local Real Estate Investment Association and have daily experience and expertise in working with homeowners in difficult situations.

Short Sale.
A short sale is basically a sale where the lender agrees to take less than or “short” of the amount owed. A short sale is negotiating with your lenders to accept less than what is owed. If there is not enough equity to sell your home, pay off the mortgages and cover the cost of selling, then a short sale is usually a good option to foreclosure. There are other situations where a lender will consider a short sale. A short sale can be VERY time consuming and complicated and requires good negotiating skills and understanding of the lender’s loss mitigation processes. If you have a second loan you usually have a better chance of doing a short sale with the second lien holder because if the first lender forecloses and sells the property at auction, the second lien holder only gets what’s left over from the proceeds of the sale after the first lender is paid off. Usually the second lien holder is wiped out. So you can see their willingness to negotiate.

We would not suggest trying to complete a short sale on your own. There are a multitude of details and paperwork involved in a short sale. Having a professional on your side can make or break the deal. Someone who knows the short sale process and paperwork is a requirement for a successful short sale.

One of the most important factors in starting the short sale process is having an offer. Lenders usually will not even begin processing the short sale package paperwork without a valid purchase and sales agreement. This is the primary reason we strongly suggest contacting your local professional real estate investor. Very few Realtors fully understand the process of a short sale and even fewer are willing to invest the amount of time it takes to complete a successful short sale, not withstanding the required negotiation skills. Listing your property and waiting for an offer takes valuable time needed to complete the short sale process. As the short sale becomes a more and more common vehicle for lenders to dispose of their non-performing assets during this mortgage crisis, more Realtors are listing homes as “short sales” and “negotiating” with the lender for a reduced price before they have an offer in the hopes that this will help them attract buyers. They don’t know where to price the house and typically price the house too high as they “talk” to the lender, asking them what they would take, thinking that this is “negotiating” a short sale for the home owner. It must be noted that this is not a short sale and the majority of these homes end up being foreclosed on for the lack of any buyers or the inability of the Realtor to negotiate a successful short sale for a buyer if they do get one. It’s not that the Realtor doesn’t care about their customer; Realtors and investors both care about their customer.

Because it only takes a lender about 30 days to foreclose on your home in Mississippi, time is of absolute importance. Real estate investors act fast, charge you nothing to buy your home and you don’t have to go through a foreclosure. With a successful short sale, everyone wins. For a free, no-obligation stop foreclosure consultation please vist our website at www.MSHomeSolutions.com and complete our Questionnaire.

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