More than 10 Million Were Written in the Last 5 Years!
Are you having to write the dreaded letter to help save your home? Are you afraid of being turned down and have to face a foreclosure sale or possible shortsale? Guess what, everyone in your situation has these same feelings of anxiety and find themselves lost due to the unknown consequences that could follow.
However, there are several things you can do to protect yourself and or give you the best opportunity to achieve the best settlements and move on with your life. The loan modification and short sale markets have changed in the last year. They no longer just accept what the homeowners and buyers are offering. Lenders are more sophisticated and have better information. They also realize they have the power over you to make you succumb to their terms. The reason for this is most homeowners do not provide the right information and or the right strategy to help negotiate better deals.
There are several ways through which you can solve your problems. A Hardship letter is the single most important letter you will probably write for some time. The problem is most homeowners are not shown how to write hardship letters correctly and what to include and what not to include. Over the past 5 years, it is estimated 98% of the letters of hardship did not completely and accurately reflect the entire situation the homeowner faced. The letter is your negotiation leverage in getting good deals. If your letter is not well written and doesn’t exemplify a real hardship, then you may not get your interest rate lowered or a principal reduction in your mortgage modification. You may not be approved for a loan mod period!
If you are turned down for your modification and want to avoid a foreclosure on your credit record, then you will have to write a shortsale hardship letter and sell your home utilizing a real estate agent. If the bank is sending you pre foreclosure letters regarding your mortgage, then don’t get panicked. You should immediately find an experienced short sale negotiation company who have years of training to help you get the best settlements.
The second thing to do is to find a website specializing in hardship letters including providing you with all the strategy to complete the perfect letter for your situation. Don’t get fooled by many of the websites offering free hardship letters just to get you to their site. These company’s prey off of your situation and make money off of you from such things as Google Ad words and other advertising banners paying them each time you visit their site. These letters should never be copied and used. Almost all of them are written wrong and will damage your negotiation position. This is one of the reasons why it is estimated that 98% of the letters written the past 5 years were done so improperly. Most consumers just copied these bad letters online and later found they owe large deficiency balances or didn’t get their deals approved.
What if you are on the other side of the table? In other words how are you going to deal with a poor financial condition if you are a lender? If the lenders just allowed everyone to renegotiate their loans and or complete shortsales with no penalties, then most of them would go bankrupt. So first, they want to make sure you have truly experienced a hardship if they are going to settle for less money than you owe them. If they find you haven’t experienced a real hardship then you may not get approved for a loan modification or a short sale.
If you found the tools and right company to help you create the perfect mortgage hardship letter, then you most likely will create the recipe where all parties win. A successful loan mod keeps you and your family in your home. A successful shortsale transaction keeps you from having one of the worst things you can have on your credit report which is a foreclosure. The lender wins by not having to complete a foreclosure process which has been documented to cost an average of $52,000 or more per home.
There are more than 64 documented hardships that could apply in your situation. Everyone generally falls into 12 major categories of hardships. However most homeowners do not expand their hardships to explain how it truly affected all their areas of their life causing the current financial situation. Mortgage hardship letters can include the loss of job or reduction in your income. Illness or death of any family member is also one of the conditions under which you can write a hardship letter. There are also conditions like divorce or separation, forced job relocation or increased expenses due to certain reasons. Find a company specializing in hardship letters who can help you select from all 64 hardship situations.
Author Resource:
R Dane Woodruff are the author of this article on Mortgage Letter of Hardhsip .
Find more information about Shortsale Hardship Letters here.