What can SRE do for you?
When we market to potential clients, we are trying to help homeowners, struggling with their mortgage, sell their homes through short sales. A short sale is when we negotiate with your lender on your behalf to sell your home for less than you currently owe on your mortgage. Arizona has been hit very hard in the current financial crisis in the United States therefore most homeowners that purchased homes during the boom are now “upside down” in their homes and can not do a regular sale.
Oftentimes, we receive calls in which the homeowner is in foreclosure; however, they want to save their home and not sell it. In these instances the homeowner may have had a short-term hardship in which they decided to not pay their mortgage, but they are now able to pay.
Our first piece of advice in these situations is to call your lender let them know why you fell behind on your payments. They may allow you to start paying again and simply add on the missed payments to the end of your mortgage. This is the best case scenario and it does happen. We will advise you that if this is the route that you want to take, you may still owe more on your home than it is worth taking at least 5 to 10 years to regain the value of what you initially paid for your home.
The next scenario that you can take to keep your home is to try for a loan modification. It is very tough to qualify for a loan modification- every lender is different and some are more likely to help than others. However the most common problem with loan modifications are that you typically have to be employed with the same company for the past two years. In Arizona we see many more successful short sales than loan modifications.
Finally, in order to keep your home your last option is to make up the missed payments. This is most likely not the option that homeowners like to hear, but the lenders are very strict when it comes to late or missed payments and they can not give every homeowner a special deal. Think about it, if you were to get a really great deal and you told your friends or family about it, then they would call their lender and demand the same or better deal even though they may not truly have encountered a hardship. If they do it for one person, then they will have to do it for everyone that calls in.
Here at SRE, we provide a service for selling your home. We help people sell their homes, not all of them are short sales, but that is where the market has shifted here in Arizona.
If you are not interested in selling your home and would like to explore your options we recommend making an appointment with a HUD Approved Advisor, they are approved by the government to council homeowners. Tim is featured in the video clip below.
Genesis Housing Services
Tim Hensley
480-306-5161
HUD Counselor Tim Hensley discusses homeowner
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