Experiencing financial difficulties is a stressful time for anyone, especially if you have a family to think of. In addition to struggling to find the money to cover monthly expenses, if your home has been used as collateral in a loan, you could also be concerned about your house potentially being foreclosed. It helps to be as best prepared as possible if this is a very real possibility so, considering this, here are some ways to prevent your home from being foreclosed.
Keep up to date with correspondence
If you’re struggling financially, you’ve probably come to dread the arrival of the morning post delivering its inevitable bills. Though the temptation is there to leave letters from creditors unopened, avoiding the problem will only result in making it worse. It could even make you liable to late payment penalties such as fines and court action that could eventually result in losing your home. Deal with bills as soon as they arrive; the earlier you identify a problem, the more time you have to deal with it and put plans in place before it’s too late and the situation is critical.
Seek financial advice
You might have been made redundant from your job and have so far been unsuccessful in securing a new position with dwindling savings, or you could have accumulated a lot of debt that you are now struggling to pay off. Either way, seeking professional help from a financial advisor will allow you to formulate a long term financial plan through analyzing and restructuring debts and budgeting. This professional advice will help you to pay off your debts, leaving you in a stronger financial position and free of the threat of home foreclosure.
Seek legal advice
If it is becoming more than likely that your home is foreclosed, one of the first things to do is to seek legal advice. An experienced debt lawyer will be able to advise you on what to do in this situation to help you avoid losing your home and help you to get your finances back on track. One option might be, for instance, to declare bankruptcy. You may be concerned about paying for lawyers’ fees for this advice. However, a lot of attorneys should offer you a free consultation to review your case and discuss potential next steps for moving forwards.
Declare bankruptcy
In some states, such as Texas, you can prevent your home from being foreclosed by filing for bankruptcy. An automatic stay preventing foreclosure from proceeding will be put in place as soon as the petition is filed in court, giving you more time to examine your financial options and decide what to do next. This could involve your debt lawyer restructuring your debt into a payment program over a set amount of time, as part of a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. At the end of the program, you will have repaid all your debt and avoided foreclosure.
