5 critical things to do when you are behind on your mortgage to avoid a foreclosure
Essential Steps To Help You Prevent A Foreclosure If You Are Behind On Your Home Mortgage Payments
You realize you are behind on your mortgage payment to Bank of America, Chase, Ocwen, etc. — what do you do now?
Let’s look at your situation and figure out some solutions.
First, you are feeling an intense amount of pressure and stress because if you can’t get this situation fixed, you know you can lose your house. If you simply don’t have the money to get caught up, this makes the pain even worse.
Second, your days are spent wondering if “the letter” or “the call” or “the knock” on the door will come. Your home will be set for foreclosure or you will be told it has already been foreclosed.
Third, you wonder how in the world you will move and what you will tell your neighbors, family and friends.
These three realities combine to make life unpleasant — so what do you do?
The good news is you have options.
You have steps you can take to fix this problem.
It is true that you will have to work hard — spend time and spend money — but you can fix this situation by taking immediate action. I can’t promise you that you won’t be foreclosed but I can promise you that if you will take the right action at the right time, good things are much more likely to happen than if you bury your head and don’t answer the phone, don’t open your mail, and pretend this is all a bad dream.
If you are still reading then you are not the kind to pretend this is a dream — you are wide awake and ready to take control.
Congratulations!
Now let’s see what the five critical steps are:
- Understand your “current location” so you know where to start from
- Request ALL loss mitigation options from your mortgage company
- Respond quickly and keep copies of everything to do with your mortgage company
- Use RESPA letters if appropriate — notice of error and request for information letters
- Be persistent — the mortgage company wants and expects you will give up — prove them wrong!
Here’s a transcript of the video above — it is not written in fancy legal double talk — instead the way I talk in videos is the way I speak to clients. If you don’t like it then you won’t like meeting with me — if you like it then great. 🙂
I trust this will be helpful to you and thank you for joining me on this journey….
John Watts
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Welcome
Well, hello, and welcome to our video on the five essential steps that you must take if you are behind on your mortgage. My name is John Watts. I’m a consumer protection attorney in Alabama, and what we’re talking about is not rental property but your main house, the house that you live in. If you are behind on your mortgage, then this video will be helpful to you.
The Problem
Now let’s talk about what is the problem. Well, the problem is, if ultimately we do not take steps to correct or reverse the issue of not making our mortgage payments, then we’re going to be foreclosed. What does foreclosure mean? That means that the bank, the mortgage company, is going to sell our property, and then normally they’re the ones that buy it. Then once they buy it, they say to you, “Hey, get out of your house, because it’s now our house,” so that’s the problem that you’re facing.
Sometimes you’ll read things online, maybe watch videos online, and people talk about, “Oh, well, there’s been all this fraud,” which that’s true, “and there’s been all this bad conduct by the mortgage companies,” and that’s true, but the conclusion is false.
They say, “So nobody can be foreclosed in Alabama.” That is not true.
The problem is, if we don’t take steps, then we are headed down a path that ultimately will lead to foreclosure.
Who is John Watts?
Who am I? Who’s this guy talking to you, because you may not know me. If you’ve seen other videos, then you may be familiar with me, but I’m going to assume you’ve never met me, never spoken with me, you don’t know who I am.
Again, my name is John Watts. I’m a consumer protection attorney in Alabama. I have two main offices, one in Birmingham and one in Madison/Huntville, Alabama, but really we represent people across the entire state. I’ve been practicing since ’95.
I represent consumers, and so we always have quite a few foreclosure type lawsuits where we’re suing a mortgage company, or maybe a mortgage company has sued us for what’s called ejectment, where that’s to kick us out of the house, and it may be worth counterclaiming against the mortgage company.
We’re not going to go into a lot of details on that. We have an entire video about the five mistakes that people make when they’re sued for an ejectment, but the point is that we are involved in a lot of lawsuits against mortgage companies.
We train lawyers, both locally in Alabama as well as across the nation, in how to defend foreclosure type lawsuits, how to sue mortgage companies, whether that’s using Alabama state law, federal law such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act or RESPA.
I do not represent mortgage companies, I do not represent banks. I sue the mortgage companies, I sue the banks.
Disclaimer
Let me give you this little disclaimer. I’m not giving you legal advice, because I don’t know what your unique situation is. I want to just give you kind of general educational advice, an overview, if you will, so that if you’re in this situation and you’re saying, “Wow, I am, you know, two months, three months, four months behind on my mortgage. What in the world do I do?”
Maybe you’re getting advertisements from these so‑called loan modification companies from out of state. They say, “Tell you what, pay us $5,000, $10,000, and we will promise to get your loan modified.”
Let me just tell you this. Ninety‑nine percent, maybe 100 percent of the time, those are scams. The point is, once you get in this position of you’re behind, maybe the mortgage company says, “We’re not going to take a partial payment, we want four months,” and your mortgage payment’s $2,000 a month, that’s $8,000.
Maybe you say, “I don’t have eight grand to stroke a check for that.”
What do you do?
Well, this video is to give you the big picture, so that you go, “Okay, now I know some options. Now I know a course of action I can take,” and then you can … if it involves sitting down with a lawyer, you can say, “Okay, now I have some idea. What questions do I ask? What am I looking for in a lawyer?”
This is not legal advice. We’re not representing that the quality of legal services if you hire us is better than the quality of legal services performed by other attorneys, and that’s a required disclaimer from the Alabama State Bar. Just keep in mind, the whole point of this is to give you knowledge.
Knowledge Plus Action Equals Real Power
Now, is that it, just knowledge? Because you know what they say, knowledge is power.
No, that’s absolutely false.
Knowledge is potential power.
Knowledge plus action, that’s where you get power. You say, “I’m in this really bad position. I’m getting all these mortgage statements and I’m behind and they’re threatening foreclosure. What in the world do I do?”
Well, having more knowledge in your brain is not enough. You’ve got to get the knowledge, and then you’ve got to do stuff. You’ve got to do something. Take action. You’ve got to get things moving, or nothing’s going to happen.
What If You Are Not Willing To Work — To Take Action?
I don’t mean to be unkind, but I’ll just say this. If you’re watching this video and you say, “I’m not willing to spend time, I’m not willing to spend money, I’m not willing to do anything,” then you might as well just shut this video off, because what I have to say to you will do you absolutely no good if you’re unwilling to spend time, spend money and take action.
You have to be willing to do those things.
Again, let me be blunt. If you’re behind on your mortgage, you are in a bad position, okay? That means obviously you’re facing some financial difficulty. Maybe those are over, maybe you’re in the middle of them, but you are facing foreclosure, and so you have got to do stuff. You’ve got to take action if you want to get out of this hole.
We sometimes have people contact us and they want to spend zero time helping themselves. Zero money helping themselves. Instead they want everyone to feel sorry for them and to help them when they will do nothing to help themselves.
If this by chance describes you, then I can’t help you.
You must be willing to pay the price to save your home.
The mortgage companies don’t want you to know what I’m about to tell you. This information is worth crawling on your hands and knees across broken glass — fortunately you don’t have to do this. All you have to do is watch the video or read this article (for free!) AND be willing to take action.
If hiring a lawyer is what you need to do, then be willing to spend money. If doing this on your own is what you want to do — then spend the time.
OK, the ones who just want a pity party have now left us — searching for some mythical “easy button”.
You, on the other hand, know there is no “easy button” — instead there is only this button: 
Overview Of Your Five Critical Steps To Take
All right, so let’s talk about what is the overview, what will you be discovering today?
Really five steps, five key things that I want you to keep in mind.
First you have to figure out your current location. Where are you right now? I don’t mean physically, but I mean where you in terms of your mortgage? Are you this far behind, are you that far behind? Is there a foreclosure sale set? Did you get a default letter, acceleration? What’s going on? That’s the first step.
The second step is, you’ve got to request all loss mitigation options, and loss mitigation just means, “Hey, mortgage company, help me do anything to avoid a foreclosure,” and we’ll go over the details of that. Figure out where you are, all the loss mitigation, and then you’ve got to be very quick in taking action. Your mortgage company says, “You know what, I need this document, this tax form, this document, this other document.” Don’t go, “Well, you know, I’m kind of busy, the kids have a the little League game tonight, really wanted to get out of town.”
No. You’re in a bad spot, and if you think you’re not in a bad spot, then again, I don’t think this video’s going to help you.
If you recognize you’re in a bad spot, then you need to take action now. You get a FedEx package from the mortgage company. Don’t say, “Oh, yeah, we’ll get to that in a week or two.” No, do it now. Fill it out now. Your third step is to take immediate action, and then keep copies of everything that you submit.
The fourth step is to use Notice of Errors and Requests for Information letters under the federal law RESPA. So let’s review. Figure out where you are, ask for all loss mitigation. Take immediate action, keep copies of what you’re doing, and then if appropriate, send what are called Notice of Error and Request for Information letters, and those are some really powerful tools that you now have under the new RESPA laws that went into effect in January, 2014.
The fifth step is to be persistent. You have to keep on keeping on. Again, know where you are, all loss mitigation options, take immediate action, keep copies, use, if appropriate, Notice of Error and Request for Information letters, and then persistence. This … if I can say it this way … this game that the mortgage companies play with you, it’s rigged. It’s designed to discourage you, so that you … you get something in the mail and you go, “Oh, they’re asking for it again? I give up.”
That’s what they want you to do, is to give up. If you say, “You know, I’m going to take like a little bit of action, and the first difficulty, I’m just going to give up,” well, then, I don’t think you’re going to be successful. If you’re willing to follow this fifth step, which is to have persistence, take action, keep on taking action, then you can be successful in this.
Let’s take the first step together . . . .
Step One: Figure Out Your “Current Location”
Let’s look at our first one. Now, I have this written down, current location, because most of us use a GPS. You may not be like me, but I am directionally‑challenged, we’ll say, so I need a GPS.
Well, so I pull up my phone and I say, “All right, take me to this location.” Well, what does my phone have to do first?
It has to figure out where am I.
You see, if I want to get to Atlanta, well, which direction do I go? Am I in Jackson, Mississippi? Savannah, Georgia? Am I in Chicago? Am I in Miami? See, it makes a difference, where am I, to figure out what do I need to do, because you can’t just say, “Well, to get to Atlanta, you drive east.” It’s not going to work if you’re in Savannah. I’ll bet you’ll end up splashing in the ocean if you do that, so you’ve got to know where are you. 🙂
What does this mean in the context of a foreclosure or being behind on your mortgage? How far behind are you? Write that down in terms of how many days behind are you?
Are you 30 days late, 60 days, 90 days late?
How much in terms of dollars are you behind? $5,000? $2,000? $1,000? $10,000? What is it?
What kind of letters are you getting from the mortgage company? Have you received what’s called a default letter, that says, “Hey, you’re in default. You have 30 days to fix it. Here’s how have you to fix it. If you don’t fix it, we’re going to accelerate, or say all the loan is due, so you don’t have 30 years. It’s all due right now.” Is that where you are, or have you received that acceleration letter?
Are they advertising in the paper?
In Alabama, where we have non judicial foreclosures, we advertise for three weeks, and it’s just in your local newspaper and there might be multiple newspapers it could be in, and it says, “Hey, we’re going to foreclose on August the 10th at the front steps of the courthouse during legal hours.” Okay, now are you there?
Because that’s really important to know, are you facing a foreclosure now or are you just simply behind?
Have you applied for loss mitigation options?
All loss mitigation means is something to try to prevent or stop a foreclosure. It could be loan modification, short sale, deed in lieu of foreclosure, forbearance, deferment, all these different things. Have you tried that? Are you in the middle of that? What’s going on? You’ve got to get a handle on where are you right now.
Now that you know where you are, now it is time to ask for help . . . .
Step Two: Ask Mortgage Company For All Loss Mitigation Options
Then the second step is you want to tell the mortgage company … now, again, I can’t give you specific advice in your situation. I’m just telling you in general, you ought to very strongly consider this, ask for all loss mitigation options.
That means you call the mortgage company and say, “Look, I’m one month behind, two months behind, five months, whatever it is. I need help/lost my job/ went through a divorce. I had a health care crisis,” whatever it is, “And I need help. Now, I want to apply for all loss mitigation options.”
Sometimes they’ll say, “Oh, well, what you mean is you only want to apply for the HAMP.”
You go, “No, no, no, no. I want all loss mitigation options.”
They go, “Oh, okay, so what you want is a loan modification.”
You go, “Well, yes, I want a loan modification, but I want all loss mitigation.”
See, loss mitigation’s sort of the top level, and then down below that we have things like short sale, deed in lieu of foreclosure, loan modification, deferment, forbearance, principal reduction, all these different things.
You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself into, “I only want a deed in lieu.” Maybe that’s the best answer for you, but don’t you want to see all your options, so that you can lay them on the table and can you kind of say, “All right, I’ve got this option and this option and … oh, wow, this one actually looks pretty good”? You want to know all your options.
So ask.
OK what happens after you ask for loss mitigation . . . .
Step Three: Act Quickly And Keep Copies Of All You Send To Your Mortgage Company
They’ll give you a package. You fill it out, and that’s really our next step, is when you get this package. Usually they come by FedEx. Sometimes they’ll email it to you or say, “Go up to the website, download.” However you get it, now you have it and you want to be very quick about filling it out.
This is not the time to delay or go, “Well, it’s such a pretty day outside and there’s a new movie coming out. I’ll get to this package later.” Nope, do it now. If saving your home, saving your house is important, do it now, okay?
Be very quick about it.
Then, whatever it asks you for, give it to them. This is not the time to say, “Well, you know, they’re asking me for two years of tax returns. I think one year is appropriate.”
What do you care? Give it to them. If they say, “You must tell me about all your living expenses,” don’t argue, “Well, they don’t have the right to find out how much I’m paying for cable.”
You know what, if you’re asking them for help, assume they have the right to ask you for this.
Now, you may want to sit down with a lawyer. You may want to say, “Is this appropriate, what they’re asking me for right here?” That’s fine, but your sort of default, your normal approach, ought to be, “Whatever they ask me for, I’m going to give it to them,” and then keep a copy.
Keep signed copies of whatever you send.
You mail off this big package to them. Maybe you put it in a FedEx. They give you one that’s already postage paid. That’s fine. Keep a copy of what you’re sending.
Now, don’t say, “Well, I know, I’ve got it in these 17 folders.” No. Take all that, run it through the copy machine. Go to FedEx, scan it. Do both, it doesn’t matter. Keep a copy of everything that you’ve sent, because the whole question of can you save your house, may come down to a lawsuit, and that lawsuit may turn on did you give them this document that they wanted. They say you didn’t. They’re, “Oh, no, no, no, you didn’t give it to us.”
You go, “I know I did.”
Well, it’s really nice if you can say, “You know what, here. All my documents that I submitted on August the 5th. They say I didn’t give them the second year of my tax return. Here it is, right here.”
Well, what if they then ask you for more documents, maybe the same documents over again?
Send it to them, and make a separate copy of that. You can say, “You know what, on August 5th, I sent them this stack, and you know what? Seven days later, they asked me for some more. I sent this other stack to them.” Now, there’s a lot of duplication, but you know that you sent this to them.
This is not the time to get cheap.
You’re trying to save a $150,000, $400,000, $500,000 house. This is not the time to say, “You know what, I think I can get by and avoid $2 worth of copy costs at FedEx.”
Look, save your house. Keep copies of everything. Be very quick.
Sometimes these mortgage companies will do the wrong thing. They’ll lie about getting your documents. They’ll make you give more documents, over and over and over. That’s okay. You can show that they were jerks later.
You can show that they were lying later, but just be the best possible person asking for this loss mitigation. Whatever that might be, loan modification, short sale, deed in lieu, forbearance, whatever it is. You want them to be able to say, “Well, you know what, that lady did everything we asked. She sent every single document. Even when we ran her through the process to try it make her just give up, she kept on sending all the documents.”
OK you figured out your current location, you asked for all loss mitigation, you have jumped through their hoops and kept copies, but what do you do about the confusing, contradictory, and just plain wrong things that the mortgage company is doing?
I’m so glad you asked…. 🙂 Let’s talk about some powerful letters you can send . . . .
Step Four: Use Notice Of Error (NOE) and Request For Information (RFI) Letters Under RESPA
Well, the fourth step is you want to use what are called Notice of Error or Request for Information letters. These are letters that you send to your mortgage company. If you take your statement, usually on the back of the statement they’ll have an address. It says, “Correspondence for Notice of Error or Request for Information.”
Sometimes they’ll say, “For qualified written request, use this address.”
You must use that address.
Go to their website. Somewhere on there, it should say, “If you want to send a Notice of Error or Request for Information, use this address.” You must use that address.
You cannot send it to where you mail the payments or just general correspondence, if they give you a specific address.
If you send it to the wrong address it is worthless — it means nothing.
All right, so what are these letters?
A Notice of Error says to the mortgage company, “You made an error. Here’s the error you made. Now fix it.” I’ll give you an example. They say, “We’re turning down your loan modification because you didn’t give us your tax return.” You say, “Well, I know I gave them my tax return,” so you write a Notice of Error letter. You can do this on your own or you can get with a lawyer to do it.
We help people all the time with this, and you say, “Dear Mortgage Company,” using their specific address for a Notice of Error, “You said on July 20th that I was turned down for a loan modification because I didn’t give you my tax return. You made an error, because I did give you my tax return on,” whatever it is, “June 15th, and I’m asking you to fix this by considering and approving my loan modification request.” That’s what a Notice of Error is.
Well, what’s a Request for Information?
It’s almost like the flip side of a notice of error.
You send those letters saying, “You made an error,” and it’s almost like you flip it over and you write on it, “Why did you say that I was turned down for a loan modification? I understand you said that I didn’t get my tax return. Why did you say that, because I did give you my tax return on whatever it was, June 15th? I just want to know why did you do that.” A Notice of Error says, “You made a mistake.” A Request for Information says, “Why did you do something,” or “Give me copies of documents.”
Now, you don’t always start off with notice of error and then go to a request for information.
You might say, “Hey, why did you refuse to give me my loss mitigation options? Why?”
Then a separate letter will say, “You made an error in refusing to give me my loss mitigation options.”
Usually these two will go hand in hand, so if you have a Request for Information, you have a Notice of Error. If you have a Notice of Error, you have a Request for Information.
A few rules, and we’ll do a longer video getting into these in detail, but I just want to give you the flavor of them. You want to make them very focused. Every letter is focused.
Don’t do a whole long list of 27 errors.
Instead, do 27 letters that have one error each.
Here’s the basic rule. When they get this letter, they have five business days to acknowledge it, to write you back and say, “Hey, we got your Notice of Error, your Request for Information, and we’re working on it.”
Now, if you send 27 letters, they might send you 27 individual letters saying, “Hey, we got your letter.” Or they might just send one letter and say, “We received your letters,” and not really identify them. It’s not really proper, but that’s for another article/video to talk about.
You want to send your letters Certified Mail. If you’re not going to send them Certified Mail, you’re just wasting your time, because they’re going to get this and go, “Heh, not Certified.” They’re just going to throw it away.
They get it, they have five business days to acknowledge receipt. If they don’t, that violates the law. Then they have 30 business days from the time they receive your letter to give you a substantive response.
If your letter is, “Hey, you made an error,” they have to say, “Yes, we did, here’s how we’re fixing it,” or, “No we did not make an error,” okay?
Well, if they say they didn’t make an error and they really did, that’s a problem for them.
What if it’s a Request for Information, so that … you’re asking them for information? They either have to give it to you or say, “We’re not giving it to you.”
If they don’t give it to you … and I’ll just tell you, the Bank of America is legendary for this. The law says what they have to give you. Bank of America, they often use this law firm. I think it’s called Blank & Rome. Some law firm, and it says, “We’re responding, and we don’t have to give you anything that’s overly burdensome, that’s proprietary, confidential.”
They list all these things, and they basically say, “Everything you asked for,” except like your mortgage and your note, maybe a payment history, they go, “Everything else is met by these exclusions, and so we’re not giving you anything.” It’s almost comical how predictable Bank of America is with that.
Many other companies … I’ll just say it … at least Bank of America will usually give you some kind of response. It’s normally a bogus response. At least they give you some response. A lot of times, the companies won’t give you any response.
Now, if they give you a bogus response or no response, oftentimes the solution is to sue them in Federal Court for violating RESPA laws.
Maybe you do another set of letters, but you may also sue them, because with every violation of the law, that can be $2,000 in statutory damages. You send out 20 legitimate letters and they refuse to acknowledge them, refuse to respond to them, well, that’s like 40 violations. That may be $80,000 in damages, plus you can get other damages, you can get attorneys’ fees.
Again, we’ll cover that in more detail. I just want you to understand, if you’re behind on your mortgage, then you look and say, “Has the mortgage company done anything wrong, or are they not being clear what they’re doing, or do I just have questions?”
You know, for example, you call them up, say, “I need loss mitigation help. I’m two months behind.” They say, “We don’t do anything with you until you’re three months behind. Skip your next payment and then call us. Then we’ll help you.” Well, doesn’t that seem odd, that your mortgage company would say, “You have to get further behind before we’ll help you”?
You probably want to send out a Request for Information. “Why won’t you give me loss mitigation options unless I’m three months behind?” Flip it over. “You made an error, not giving me loss mitigation.”
Again, I hope that gives you the big picture of it. Know what your current location is, ask for all loss mitigation. Be very quick, take immediate action, keep copies of what you do. Use your Request for Information and Notice of Error letters, and then through this whole process, this is what you have to have throughout this entire process. Here’s where you are now, here’s where you’re trying to get to. If you miss one step, our last step, you will never make it. That critical step is . . . .
Step Five: You Must Have Persistence To Succeed
You must have persistence, because they will throw up all these roadblocks for you, all these barriers. As you’re trying to get to a solution, they put up a roadblock, because they know most people will just give up.
You bust through that roadblock and then they put up another one, because the few people that did what you did to break through it, almost all of them will just give up at the second roadblock.
You’ve got to keep breaking through those roadblocks.
I forget the name of it. There’s a story I read to my kids, something about looking for a bear or something, and the theme of the story is some obstacle comes up. It’s like, “Well, we’ll go around it.” Well, if you can’t go around it, “We’ll go under.” If you can’t go under, “We’ll go over.” If you can’t go over, “We’ll go through.” That is, you just … whatever you need to, you just keep on keeping on. Keep on taking action, until you can get loss mitigation to save your home.
Now, look.
Sometimes the end result is you need to leave your house.
I had somebody that had a $1.7 million home, and they said, “What I can afford to do is … ” they’d had obviously great financial reversals in their life … they said, “I can pay about $600 a month. I want to stay in my $1.7 million house,” which by the way was now worth like $800,000, but they owed $1.7 million.
You know, that isn’t going to work, okay? I’m just going to say it … that math does not add up.
Sometimes the answer is you need to leave, but if you leave, then again, that’s part of loss mitigation.
Maybe you do a short sale. Maybe you do a deed in lieu. That’s where you hand them your deed instead of them doing a foreclosure, but the point is you want to take all the action that you can so that you can discover, out of all these options, all these loss mitigation options … maybe there’s five, maybe there’s seven, maybe there’s ten for you … which one is best for you? You have to have persistence to get to that point.
What Do You Do Now?
Now, what do you do? You’ve watched this video. I think we’ve been going like 30 minutes or so. What do you do now? Well, figure out your current location. If you want to do this on your own, just call the mortgage company and get all loss mitigation. Start filling out those packages. Keep copies of everything you do. If there have been errors or unusual things that you have questions about, use those Notice of Error, Requests for information. Then number five, be persistent.
If You Would Like For Us To Help You
Now, you may say, “I don’t want to do this on my own.” Well, you’re always welcome, if you live in Alabama, to give us a call.
Again, my name is John Watts. It’s (205) 879‑2447, or can you contact us through this website and we’ll be glad to sit down with you and do a consultation, and go over these options.
Sometimes we do that and we say, “You know what, you’re absolutely on the right track. I feel very confident the mortgage company’s going to take care of you. They’re going to give you appropriate loss mitigation options.”
Other times we say, “You know, these guys, they are just dead set on foreclosing against you, so you need to file bankruptcy so here’s a referral to a bankruptcy lawyer.” Not really a fond option that I have, but sometimes (rarely) it’s what you need to do.
But if these guys are breaking the law, as they often do, it usually is the better option to sue them in federal court.
It’s amazing. When you sue these guys in federal court and they know, “Oh, wow, we’re sued under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act,” because almost all of them are considered debt collectors under the law.
They’re being sued under RESPA.
You’ve sent all these Request for Information, Notice of Error letters. There are also rules in RESPA about a certain number of days that have to go by before they can foreclose. They have to do certain steps as they approach foreclosure. Assume they violate those.
They get this lawsuit and they’re like, “Oh, wow, we are facing a serious federal court lawsuit. We may owe a bunch in damages. We have to pay our lawyers, and we’ve got to pay the consumer’s lawyer under this federal statute.”
That tends to motivate them to say, “Hey, can we talk? Can we work this out?”
It’s amazing. They wouldn’t talk to you before, but now they’re very, very eager to want to talk to you. If they’re not, that’s okay. That’s why the federal courthouse was built, that’s why judges have the black robes, and we go to trial on those cases.
Bottom Line: Take Action!
The point is, what do you do now? Well, if I can summarize it with this, take action.
Do something. Look, I understand. When everything is crashing down around you and … the temptation is to just sort of be frozen and say, “I’m just going to close my eyes, maybe this will go away.”
You know what, this is not a dream. When you open your eyes, you’re just going to be further behind.
If this is where you are and this is foreclosure, every day you’re getting closer and closer and closer to the foreclosure. Sometimes the options that you have right here and here and here, when you get to this point, those options go away. A very strict time limit. Take action. If you want to do this on your own, do it on your own, but take action.
If you want to get with a lawyer, call a lawyer.
Again, if you’re in Alabama, you can call us, (205) 879‑2447. We’ll be glad to help you, glad to sit down with you and go over your options. Our fee for our 1.5 hour meeting (by phone or in person) is $500.00. If this is something you cannot afford, then handle this on your own.
If you can afford it and you have looked at all of the free information we give out and you want to meet, then it makes sense for us to do that and we’ll be happy to meet with you.
Now, the first time I meet with you, will I tell you, “Yes, we can absolutely file a lawsuit, let’s file a lawsuit right now”?
Sometimes that happens. It’s not always the case.
Sometimes you’re here, the foreclosure is soon, and we say, “You know what, you need to do a bunch of letters. You need to call your mortgage company every single day and ask them for help. That’s your action plan,” but the point is, take action. Important to take the right action but do something — anything….
Whatever it is that you can do, do something, and I hope that this video has given you some knowledge, kind of a framework, a big picture, an overview, of what’s going on when you’re behind on your mortgage, and I hope that I’ve given you at least a little bit of motivation to say, “Take action now, do something now.”
Congratulations And Final Thoughts For You
I want to congratulate you for watching this video. I realize it’s a long video. You’ve got other things you can do, but I hope that you find that this has been very helpful to you, very valuable to you, and if it has, then I want to congratulate you in advance for taking even more action, because your house is important.
Your home is important, and I want you to understand all your options if you’re behind on your mortgage. Thank you again for watching this. Congratulations for taking action, and if we can help you, pick up the phone and dial (205) 879‑2447, or contact us through our website.
Have a great day….
John G. Watts