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How Long Til Foreclosure?

By Cathy Moran

time til foreclosure

Everyone who has made the painful decision to let an unaffordable house go to foreclosure wants to know: how long before they have to get out.

While the statutory foreclosure process in California , on paper, takes a little more than 4 months, if the the creditor is perfectly efficient, creditors aren’t perfectly efficient. In fact, they often seem to be deliberately dilatory. The foreclosure process stretches out. But how long?

I got a good data point today from a client in a pending Chapter 13 filed late in 2009. The client has not made a payment in 17 months. The confirmed Chapter 13 plan provides that the debtor will surrender the house and grants the creditor relief from stay. The lender denied a loan modification in April, 2011.

And the creditor has not yet taken the first, legally mandated step in the foreclosure process!

So, even if the lender starts foreclosure tomorrow, it will be September, almost two years from the filing of the bankruptcy case before title to the house changes hands. And I am fairly confident that the lender will not initiate foreclosure proceeding immediately, and even more confident that they will not be perfectly efficient in doing so.

The future is not predictable, and what is true today may not be true tomorrow, but it is clear that lenders are not in a hurry to own more California real estate.

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Filed Under: Real property & mortgages, Strictly California Tagged With: California, default, foreclosure, sale

About Cathy Moran

I'm a veteran bankruptcy lawyer and consumer advocate in California's Silicon Valley. I write, teach, and speak in the hopes of expanding understanding of how bankruptcy can make life better in a family's future.

Comments

  1. Cathy Moran says

    May 25, 2011 at 7:01 am

    I’ve gathered more data points on “getting to foreclosure”. The family I saw yesterday hadn’t made a payment on a million dollar, Countrywide loan in a year, and there was no sign of even the start of a foreclosure.

    Your mileage may vary.

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Soapbox is a companion site to Bankruptcy in Brief, where I try to be largely explanatory and even handed (Note I said “try”).

Here, I allow myself to tell stories and express strong opinions. We dig deeper into how to consider bankruptcy and navigate a bankruptcy case.

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