The minute someone is in the early stages of foreclosure, there’s a whole bunch of people who will send what typically look like handwritten letters. (Some actually are. Some are just a computerized font to make it look that way.)
These letters almost always offer you a deal that sounds too good to be true. But when you’re in the middle of possibly being foreclosed on, it’s easy to put your hope in their promises.
They’ll typically offer to do one of a few things:
- They’ll offer to buy your house quickly, and for cash. (OK, that sounds good. But at how low of a price? Are you leaving money on the table? Most of the time they want to buy your house at a steep discount.)
- They’ll offer to buy your house, hold the mortgage, and rent it back to you until you get back on your feet. (This sounds like a very nice thing to offer, but they’re basically preying on someone’s hopes, and once they get ownership of the property, they’re banking on you defaulting so they can evict you, take the house from you, and sell it. There’s actually more deceitful ways this can play out. But a bit much to get into here. Just beware of these sorts of offers.)
- They’ll offer to help you sell your house “short”. (AKA a “short sale”. Selling it for less than you owe, and getting the bank to accept that. This is actually a pretty common remedy. But the thing is, it’s not always necessary. Sometimes an owner has plenty of equity and doesn’t even need to sell it short. But to someone who specializes in short sales, a short sale is always the best solution.)
There’s other types of offers you might see. Too many to list. But you get the gist.
If you haven’t already received at least one of these, expect to. And when you do, call me. At least bounce the offer off of me, so I can walk you through the ins and outs of what they’re actually offering.
But beyond that, I’ll help you determine if you should even consider any of those types of offers. You might be in better shape than you think, and there may be other ways of remedying the situation. I can’t and won’t know until we get into your entire situation.