Buying a house is a dream come true, but sometimes that dream home converts to a nightmare. Stuff happens … that makes money tight or nonexistent, and suddenly a mortgage payment is late once or a few times on a row. Then a mortgage payment is missed entirely.
Just Reading About It Gives Us The Feels
We can feel the hopelessness in that situation. Stomach churning, heart pounding fear, that stirs up a feeling that the world is against us.
Sometimes things happen due to nothing we have personally done. Like the government shutting down the world recently for a pandemic. Businesses closed and unemployment shot sky high. A similar situation occurs when we suddenly become injured or ill.
Other times, it may be our fault. We didn’t grow our savings account, overspending, so a major repair to our home or vehicle makes the money run out before the month runs out. Either way, that hopeless feeling leaves us paralyzed with fear!
Behind on Mortgage Payments Help!
First Advice: Call The Mortgage Company
They don’t want your house back. Their plan is for you to borrow money from them, and pay it back on a timely basis, with lots of interest. They do not want to own a house, so don’t worry that they are anxious to foreclose on your mortgage. In fact, they are anxious to work out of a plan for you to continue making the payments.
Call them. Tell them what’s happening in life that’s making the payments late or not be paid. Ask for their help. They may have several options to offer, so it never hurts to ask for their help. If what they are offering doesn’t resolve the issue, then time for the next step.
Second Advice: Rent or Sell
These are actually two different solutions, so let’s examine each and when they’ll work.
Should I Rent?
Add up the costs of owning a home – add the mortgage payment plus insurance, taxes, and maintenance. That gives a monthly number for the cost of the home. Now check to see how much the home will rent for on a monthly basis. If rent is equal to or higher than the cost of owning the home, it can be rented out.
For this option to work, the homeowner must be willing and able to move to another place with affordable rent. The upside is the rental keeps the payments current on the home, and sometimes there’s extra to help the homeowner with their living expenses. This can be a win-win!
Should I Sell?
Call a Realtor! Ask them to calculate the selling price for the home in it’s current condition. If that selling price less selling costs exceeds the balance due for the mortgage, it can be a solution. It depends on how much is owed on the house to know which of these two solutions is the best.
Third Advice: Call A Real Estate Investor
This may be the best plan if repairs or updates are required before it can sell or if the mortgage company is unwilling to offer options to catch up the payments.
The nice thing about calling a real estate investor like Best REI is it’s an instant solution. We visit your house, calculate the repairs costs, calculate the selling price of the house after it’s updated and repaired, and that gives us the price we can offer to buy the house. The better it’s current condition, the more we can offer.
Then it’s strictly up to the homeowner which solution works for them. We try to help them see all these options, because we want them to know all their options and choose the one that works best for them.
So, behind on mortgage payments … help is what we do!