Mortgage Arrears: How To Save Your Home From Foreclosure

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 29th, 2010

There are many times in life where situations may occur that put a stress on your financial situation. Losing a job, medical emergencies, or family situations may cause you to fall behind on your bills. However, losing your job does not have to mean that you also lose your home. If you have accumulated some mortgage arrears on you home after you lost you job, do not lose heart. There are still some ways that you could save your home from foreclose. Being in contact with your bank and working with them to help you out, is the best thing to start with. To help you stave off foreclosure on your home, here are some ways to handle your mortgage arrears.

Contact Your Bank

There are hundreds of people all over the country that have missed a couple of payment on their home so you are not alone in this predicament. If you think that you will be unable to pay your amortization for a couple of months while you are still trying to find work, it is best to call your bank and tell the loans officers about you change of circumstances. You bank has probably handled this situation before and they know how this go. Banks are not in the business of reposing and foreclosing properties so they will not really jump at the chance of divesting you of your home. Besides, if the bank forecloses your home, it will now have to face the challenge of disposing the property in order to free their capital. Since foreclosing your property will entail more work on he part of the bank than just merely giving you a couple of months grace period, the bank will most likely give you the grace period to pay for your amortization.

When negotiating with the bank for grace period, make sure that you express your strong intention to pay your debts. You should also outline your plan on how you will go about paying your debts and how much time it will take you to do this. If the bank officer will see your strong interest to pay your debts and keep your home, he or she will be more open to the possibility of giving you the extra time that you need.

Leasing Your House

If you cannot pay for the amortization of your home and you have exhausted your grace period, you might want to lease your home for a while. You can use the money that you get from the lease to pay for the amortization. If you have no other place to go, you can just rent a portion of the house. You can move to the basement of the house for a new months and lease the upstairs rooms. Note that if you really want to keep your home, moving to the basement for a few months or so is a small sacrifice that you have to do. Besides, living in the basement of your home is not really that bad. Once you get a nice job, you can always move back to the upstairs room.