Hey guys, this is Brad with Arbor View Properties. Thanks for checking out this video, really appreciate it. If you have your house that you need to sell and you don’t want to watch the rest of this video, click on the link below in the description. It’ll take you to our website, fill out the web-form and a member of our team will call you as soon as possible. Okay. So foreclosure moratorium during COVID, as some of you might know, there was a federal moratorium on foreclosures. And basically what that meant is any federally backed loan, which would be like a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or a VA or FHA. So the VA loans and FHA loans and USDA loans, those are government backed, and then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans are also backed by the federal government and they’re insured by the federal government.
So basically what happened was in the midst of COVID, the federal government passed a ruling or a law that basically put a moratorium on any foreclosures during that time period. So what has happened as a result of that? Well, people are still delinquent on their payments and people are still missing payments. Now, fortunately, a lot of lenders got smart from 2007 to 2008 and realized that it’s probably better to work with the borrower and they may have done a forbearance, where they basically just put your payments on hold. Now some lenders will lump it onto the end of the loan, some of them will make you pay it in three months as a lump sum. It just depends on your lender. And if you’re thinking about doing a forbearance, you should really read the fine print, understand whether you might be responsible for a lump sum payment in a few months, or maybe they’re going to tack it onto the end of the loan, how they’re going to charge you interest on that. Really, really, really pay attention to the fine print.
I had a friend of mine who actually looked into it on their mortgage and decided that it actually wasn’t going to be a good idea to do it because when he read the fine print, there was a little more to it than what the bank had made it out to be when he spoke to them. So, that happened a lot. And then in addition to that, banks got smart from 2007, 2008, and they won’t have to foreclose on a lot of people, so they’re more willing to do modifications to the note. That modification might be principal balance change, maybe it’s tacking on that deferred amount to the end of the loan, and then you making your payments again. Really, that’s between you and your bank to work out or you and your lender to work out what those terms are. And you may or may not qualify for that.
I have heard through the grapevine, and don’t quote me on this because I don’t know whether this is true or not, because again, this is very lender specific, but if you did a forbearance, sometimes you won’t qualify for a loan modification. So what does that mean? It means they can still foreclose on you if you still are in default. In addition, just because there’s a foreclosure moratorium, all that’s doing is just buying time. So ultimately, if you can’t get back out of that hole that you’re in or the borrower can’t get back out of that hole that they’re in, they’re going to have to come up with that money one way or another. And when this moratorium goes away, the foreclosures are going to happen.
It’s going to be a little slow because there’s a backlog of foreclosures that need to happen, that haven’t happened because, first of all, not only because there was a moratorium, but a lot of the courts were closed for many, many months. And processing evictions and foreclosures were stalled just because the courts were more closed and they weren’t hearing cases, so now they have a backlog of cases. So what does that mean for you as a homeowner and maybe you’re in trouble and you’re behind on your payments? Well, first of all, do everything you can to try to do a modification, negotiate with the bank. Your last resort should be trying to sell the property. This is your house, you worked hard for it, but if you do need to sell this house, then there are people out there such as us who can help you with that.
We can buy the house before the foreclosure. We’ve done it, I don’t know how many times in the past, where someone has come to us and said, “Hey, my house is going up for auction in 30 days, 60 days, whatever, and I need to sell it. I can’t catch up on the payments. I’m so far behind and so far in the hole that I’m not getting out of this hole.” And they reach out to us and we work out a deal where we can actually buy the house, stop the foreclosure from happening, and then in that case, then they don’t have a foreclosure on the record. You will still have a delinquency on your credit because you were delinquent on your mortgage, but you won’t have that foreclosure on your record, your permanent record for a long time.
So it can allow you within a shorter period of time to be able to go buy another house in the future. You can sell this house. We can work with you to make sure that if you need a week or two to get out after closing or whatever, we’re very, very flexible in those terms. So give us a call, we’d love to talk to you. If we can’t help you, we’ll let you know we can’t help you. We’re not going to jerk you around. We’re not going to tell you that we can help you, string you along and then realize that we can’t help you. We’re going to be able to tell you pretty quickly whether or not we might be able to help you with your scenario. So definitely give us a call. We’d love to help you. (770) 810-5715 or again, click on the link below in the description. It’ll take you to our website, you can fill out the form and a member of our team will call you as soon as we can. So really hope this helps. Thank you and have a great day.