Non-Judicial Foreclosure… it’s the fine print stupid!

As the name would imply, non-judicial foreclosure does not involve a lawsuit. The lender issues to the homeowner a Notice of Default and a notice of its intent to sell the homeowner’s property. The trustee must record the Notice of Default in the recorder’s office in the county in which your property is located. The Title Insurance company involved in your original purchase of the property can be helpful in clarifying whether the Notice of Default was properly filed.

There are occasions in which a trustee fails to record the Notice of Default, or mistakenly records it against the wrong property, or in the wrong county. Be on guard of clerical errors as they invalidate the foreclosure. If an error is found, do not wait until the last week in the foreclosure before advising the trustee of their mistake. Send a letter to the trustee advising him/her of the failure to properly record the Notice of Default and demand that the trustee start over. This letter should be sent by Certified Mail with return receipt requested. If you hand-deliver the letter, be sure you have a copy that can be signed as proof of delivery.

If the trustee ignores your request, you have the right to file a lawsuit to stop the sale. This will give you more time to navigate through the foreclosure process. You can demand the foreclosure be stopped until the trustee starts the foreclosure over again from the beginning by issuing a new Notice of Default. A word of caution: be sure your lender has your current address. The trustee is only obligated to send a Notice of Default to the address listed in the deed of trust, so if you are renting the property or you have moved out of the house you may not receive these legal documents as the lender may only have the last address you provided them.

The Notice of Default must be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the county where your property is located. This is a requirement in most states. The notice must be published within days after the recording of the Notice of Default and must be published weekly until the sale. As the property owner you have a right to receive an Affidavit of Publication from the trustee and copies of the newspapers in which the notice appeared.

It is your right to request and receive a Beneficiary Statement from your lender after you have received the Notice of Default. Request this statement in writing and send a copy to the trustee. The lender is required to respond to this request and it will also give you an opportunity to check the Notice of Default for any errors.

As in judicial foreclosure, the homeowner has a chance to stop the sale by paying the default amount owed or by coming to an agreement with the mortgage lender. This agreement may include setting up a repayment plan and being allowed the option of delayed payments for a specified amount of time. The property owner can also stop foreclosure by filing for either Chapter 13 or Chapter 7 bankruptcy. If the homeowner fails to stop the foreclosure, the house is auctioned off in the same manner as a judicial foreclosure.

Non-judicial foreclosures are more beneficial to the lender as the lender does not incur the legal costs of bring a lawsuit against the homeowner.

If you, or anyone you know is facing foreclosure it is important that they understand the process. To learn more about the foreclosure maze see http://www.defeatforeclosure.org This eBook can save you house, your credit, your rights and prevent you from being victimized a second time by the fraudulent foreclosure scam artists.

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Foreclosure? Don’t Be Victimized Twice

The old Chinese saying that “disaster brings opportunity” is true even in foreclosures which brings out the best of scammers looking for a deal.

When you are facing foreclosure and looking for help to avoid losing your home, you need to be careful. There are many corrupt individuals just waiting to pounce upon you and take advantage of your misfortune. They advertise themselves as foreclosure “rescuers” or “experts.” Before you realize it, they will acquire your property without a formal or recorded purchase for a fraction of what it would have brought at sale.

Without recording any change of ownership they will try to rent your property to another unsuspecting person while you remain legally bound to make the mortgage payments. The mortgage company is unaware that anything is wrong and you are left on the hook to pay the mortgage on a house you no longer possess and upon which you do not receive rentals.

Most homeowners lack adequate knowledge about foreclosure, their legal rights, and alternatives to foreclosure. Beware of scammers who promise rescue from foreclosure.

There are mainly three categories of foreclosure rescue scams: The Phantom Help-The Bailout-The Bait-and-Switch.

In Phantom Help: the so-called rescuer will charge fees for light-duty phone calls or paperwork you can easily do yourself. None of these phone calls or paperwork actually results in saving your home. It just gives you a false sense of hope and prevents you from seeking qualified help.

In a Bailout: the rescuer deceives you into signing over title with the belief that you will be able to remain in the house as a renter and eventually buy it back over time. The actual terms are so onerous that the buy-back becomes impossible, you lose possession and the rescuer walks off with the right to sell and possess without the costs of foreclosure.

It is important at this point to stress that you DO NOT SIGN anything without consulting an attorney, no matter what these scammers tell you. If the deal is so good and so beneficial to you it will be just as good in a few days after you have had sufficient time to read the document and seek legal advice. Any deal that sounds too good to be true, usually is.

In Bait-and-Switch: under the guise of having you sign documents to bring your mortgage current, the rescuers will cause you to surrender your ownership. The documents appear to be temporary loans. They will do this in a sneaky way so that you will not realize you have been scammed until you are evicted.

How does the scam work? Scammers approach homeowners in many ways including a straightforward phone call, or flyers and brochures being left at the door, and even a knock on the door. Some of the scammers are well organized and advertise in the local newspaper classified section. Some even have their own websites.

When you are faced with foreclosure, you do not have much time to react. This can lead you to make hasty decisions without consulting others. Scammers almost always highlight the lack of time and insist that you make quick decisions. They then pressure you for a quick signature on documents that you have not been given adequate time to read.

The initial contact typically revolves around a simple message and frequently contains a “time is of the essence” theme, adding a note of urgency to what is already a stressful and possibly desperate situation. Once you fall for the trap and decide to move forward with the rescuer, you will be promised a fresh start at the initial meeting and they may also provide you with testimonials of other homeowners they claim to have rescued. They will then instruct you to cease all contact with your lender and allow them to take over. Any time you cease all contact with your lender, it is dangerous. It cuts off access to your options and you can quickly run out of time to prevent foreclosure. By the time you realize what is happening, it’s too late and you have been conned.

Scammers will do everything to cut off a home-owner’s access to correct information. They win the homeowner’s trust and warn the homeowner to stay away from attorneys and counseling agencies, ironically on the grounds that the attorneys and agencies are “out to make money from the homeowner’s misfortune.”

Once it is too late to save your home, you will have been drained by substantial heavy fees and other charges. If a deed was signed on fraudulent promises, you, the homeowner, will then be evicted by the “rescuer” from the property you once owned. DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING without consulting an attorney.

For more information go to http://www.defeatforeclosure.org

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Foreclosure? Save your House, Your credit and Your Rights

Foreclosure is a very scary word. It carries with it a public stigma that includes embarrassment, personal failure and the threat of a lasting negative impact that affects your credit rating, future real estate purchases, even the ability to rent an apartment after you have lost your home.

Foreclosures are at a 30-year high brought on by interest-only loans, no or low down payments, adjustable rate mortgages and a sagging real estate market. Greed and over-inflated prices drove lenders to bait borrowers with loans they simply could not afford to repay.

The old saying “What goes up must come down” applies to a soaring real estate market that was sometimes unrealistically over-priced. Alan Greenspan refused to utilize the Fed’s power to rein in the sub-prime perpetrators arguing that the damage from a boom and bust would be less than the damage from regulating the banks. It is now quite obvious that decision was irresponsible and lame. This was like asking Americans to play football without referees. Maybe Greenspan thinks 5 million foreclosures is an acceptable price to pay?

As sellers continued to get their inflated prices and much more in the past few years, many homes sold with multiple offers that bid the home prices up-usually to an artificially high level. Consequently, we are having a sharp downward readjustment of prices that may last for the next few years. As an example, it is estimated that 12% of Californians will sell their homes at a loss in 2008, up from the 2.5% just a year ago in 2007. Nationwide the trend is becoming evident.

“Stated income,” a loan qualifying practice in which the borrower did not need to provide the lender with proof of income, was commonly used and abused by both borrower and lender alike. Many in the lending industry call these “Liar’s Loans,” that have impacted the lenders, borrowers, investors and the economy. P.T. Barnum, the famous man of the circus once said: “A Sucker is born every minute.” It now appears that the American taxpayer is being suckered into more government handouts, and more corporate welfare. Its time to throw the lending criminals behind bars not rescue them at taxpayer expense.

If you are presently in foreclosure, or headed in that direction, be assured that you are not alone. Thousands of people every day will find themselves in this awful situation-many times not of their own making, but due to ill-informed buying decisions and possible immoral dealings of unscrupulous mortgage brokers.

As a realtor for 14 years in California I have seen these abuses in lending upfront and personal. After the US House and Senate bailed out Bear Sterns with $30 billion it became apparent that saving Wall Street was more important then saving main street. I decided to write Defeat Foreclosure that can help the homeowner save their home, their credit and protect themselves from the foreclosure scam artists. For more information see http://www.defeatforeclosure.org

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