Stop Foreclosure-Legal Action You Can Take to Save Your Home

If you are facing foreclosure you want to take charge of the process. Your main goal is to stop the foreclosure. You want to save your home. You also want to protect yourself and your family.

One step in the process is to determine whether you can get the upper hand in legal action with your mortgage company. You may wonder how this can be done. There are several different approaches. Let me review two of these with you.

The first is called "Produce the Note" defense.

After you got the money for your mortgage, your mortgage company probably did not keep your mortgage. They probably sold it to an investor who packaged it with other mortgages and sold investments in that package to investors on Wall St. These investments were bonds.

Technically the note you signed at closing has to be passed on to each party at each step of the way and is to be held by the end investor. With the volume of mortgages done from 2000 to 2006 most companies did not pass the original note on to the end investor. Frequently the original note was misfiled along the way.

In court action lawyers specializing in foreclosure have asked the judges to have the mortgage company produce the original note to show that they, in fact, were the true owner of the mortgage. When the mortgage company cannot produce the note, the case has been thrown out.

This first happened on a case in Florida. In 2007 14 foreclosure cases were thrown out in a court in Ohio when the mortgage company could not produce the note.

This tactic is primarily designed to get a delay in the foreclosure. The goal of the lawyer representing the person facing foreclosure is to get the mortgage company to negotiate a monthly payment more favorable with their client. This payment is a lower one that the person can make every month. It will enable them to keep their home.

This defense is not as successful as it was originally. Mortgage companies are now making sure that they have the original notes before going to court.

The second and more successful action is to show that at the time you got your mortgage, the mortgage company made legal errors. In the process they misled you and violated federal or state laws.

Your lawyer will review all of the documents that you signed at closing when you got your mortgage. They will ask you if your mortgage company or loan officer said anything to you which was different from what appeared in these documents.

If there is a prepayment clause in your mortgage was that disclosed to you before closing? Did you know what that prepayment penalty was?

Was the interest rate on the closing documents the same as what you agreed to with your loan officer? Were you led to believe that you were getting a regular thirty year mortgage? At closing did you find out that it was a 2/1 or 3/1 Adjustable Rate Mortgage?

Your lawyer can use any legal misrepresentations to help you gain the upper hand and to stop the foreclosure process. It also enables them to have the upper hand in negotiating a more favorable settlement for you with your mortgage company.

As you can see, it's a two way street. Your mortgage company can take legal action against you. You can also take legal action against your mortgage company. To take control of the foreclosure process you may want to go to court.

If you feel legal action is in order, don't make the mistake and try to represent yourself. Hire a lawyer who specializes in foreclosures to represent you. They are skilled in knowing what to do and how to do it. If you try to represent yourself, your chance of being successful is greatly reduced.

As a real estate investor since the 1980's Mark Elkins has seen the devastating impact foreclosure has had on common ordinary people. This has led him to study and gain much knowledge and insight into how to help people in foreclosure to take the offensive, reverse the process, save their home and minimize their losses. Please visit his website, http://www.stopforeclosureanswer.com

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