Well, I promised that I would write this the day after my first post :-) but I got behind so here goes...
Okay, so your lender has decided it's time to take action against you for your default and they file a foreclosure. You get served with papers (if they can find you) and those papers tell you that you have 30 days to answer.
Since this is a legal action they have to give you a chance to say they are wrong, you don't owe them money, etc. (The usual disclaimer here explaining that I am not a lawyer, not giving legal advice, etc etc etc)
So let's assume that you owe them money and you know it and you don't want to fight the foreclosure. What can you do?
Well, if you want to try to keep your house you can try for a loan modification in which the lender changes the terms of your loan presumably to help you get caught up. If you google loan modifications you can find 10 million gazillion sites about it so I won't go into all the details here.
If you decide you just want out you can try for a short sale, in which the lender takes less than what you owe to sell the home before the foreclosure is all said and done. You can also ask for a deed in lieu of foreclosure which is where you turn your deed over to the lender.
If you are doing these things seek legal advice from your attorney and real estate advice from a good agent that specializes in distressed sales (if you're in Ohio I am glad to help you with short sales).
Be careful when paying someone up front when you're in foreclosure for help. There are a lot of scams out there, especially in the loan mod realm right now!
Tomorrow (I promise to really write it this time LOL) I'll talk about what happens when a house goes through the full foreclosure process....
