You’ve got a lot to keep an eye on. You probably regularly check Your blood pressure. Your credit report. Your stock portfolio. Your bank balance. Your team’s standings. Yet chances are, your home is your biggest investment and perhaps even the cornerstone of your retirement plan. But you have no idea what you really owe […]
10 Tips To Help You Keep Your House
When financial trouble rears its head, keeping the house becomes a number one priority. Whether the pinch is caused by loss of income, a loan that resets, or business slow down, you can find making the mortgage payments a challenge. Not to mention sorting out escrow screwups and changes of servicers. So, we’re rounding up […]
Mortgage Forbearance And The Hidden Gotcha: Escrow
Got a mortgage forbearance? Seems like a relief. But watch out for the normally escrowed taxes after the forbearance is up. The CARES Act made forbearance on federally backed mortgages available for the asking. But no one talked about the escrow portion of the skipped mortgage payments. Federal guidance urged servicers to offer easy ways […]
No Foreclosure If Loan Modification In Process
The cruelest trick played on homeowners trying to modify their mortgage was dual tracking. One side of the bank assured the borrower that their loan modification application was being considered and they didn’t need to worry. All the while, the other side of the bank was conducting a foreclosure sale. The borrower wakes up to […]
DIK Remedies For Foreclosure Breed Bankruptcy Tragedies
Warning: virulent outbreak of do-it-yourself bankruptcies all around. Symptoms: panic over prospect of foreclosure Supposed remedy: file your own skeleton Chapter 13 bankruptcy Prognosis: enjoy the stay for about 2 weeks, followed by foreclosure relapse Homeowners facing foreclosure Three different would-be clients called in a 10 day period this month, facing foreclosure. And all three […]
Don’t Trust Anything Your Lender Says On The Phone
Don’t trust the loan servicer for a moment, was my advice to the client who was trying to track payments he’d made on his home mortgage . The mortgage industry has created an inhabited accounting swamp around your home; the lender’s representative lives in that swamp. Don’t turn your back on a carnivorous predator. I’m […]
Bankruptcy Debtors Entitled To Monthly Mortgage Statements
Servicers must now send monthly mortgage statements to borrowers in bankruptcy under a new CFPB rule effective April, 2018. Thus ends, we hope, years of uncertainty and indifference, rooted in the automatic stay and a homeowner’s ongoing obligation on their mortgage after bankruptcy. The earlier version of the rule, adopted in 2014, allowed servicers […]
Sloppy Mortgage Servicers Prey On Borrowers
Given the way they behave, you’d think mortgage servicers actually flew a pirate flag over their operations. They cash your check for the mortgage payment, then who knows what they do with it and what they credit it to. Outside of bankruptcy, screw ups in handling your payments are a breach of the contract […]
Bankruptcy Judge – Umpire In A Robe?
The most powerful tool for debtors fixing things is the bankruptcy judge. My friend bankruptcy lawyer Doug Jacobs explains the difference between the bankruptcy chapters available to individuals this way: Chapter 7’s fix things; Chapter 13’s allow debtors to fix things. Kinda like the difference between grabbing a quick shower and spending a week at the […]
Is Home Equity A Substitute For Retirement Savings
My home is my retirement plan. If I had a dollar for every time a client said that, I could retire today. But that approach to funding your old age only works if…. Sell your house to retire The value in your house makes your balance sheet strong, but doesn’t put food on the table […]
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