Some States Are Not Using Their Foreclosure Settlement Funds to Help Homeowners
States recently received $2.5 billion from the major banks for foreclosure prevention and related help for homeowners. But much of that is not being used for those purposes.
Know This Before Deciding to Sell Your Home
If you’re a homeowner who is selling his or her home for any of the following three reasons, think again: 1) you can’t afford the house payments, 2) you owe income taxes with a tax lien on your house, and/or 3) your mortgage modification application was rejected. A couple blogs ago I told you […]
AARP Report Says More Older Americans Now Still Have Morgage Debt, Larger Mortgages, and So–Surprise–More Foreclosures
Not only is the foreclosure rate climbing for older mortgage holders, it is climbing faster than it is for younger ones.
10 Big Reasons to Get Legal Advice about Bankruptcy Before Selling Your Home
The SINGLE overarching reason to get advice from a bankruptcy attorney before selling your home is to save money, possibly a great deal of money. I’ll tell you ten ways to do so—three today and then the rest in a couple blogs next Tuesday and Thursday. 1. Avoiding judgment liens: If some creditor has sued […]
“If Only I’d Gone to See My Bankruptcy Attorney Sooner . . . ”
Those are the words I hate to hear from a new client. Bankruptcy attorneys are in the business because we truly want to help people. It’s an emotionally tough area of law, dealing all the time with clients who are financially hurting. Usually my client are also hurting in other ways, related to what caused […]
Choosing the Right Medicine for Saving Your Home through Bankruptcy
Both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 stop a foreclosure of your home. One or the other COULD be better for you and your home, but which one is it? Many considerations come into play in deciding whether a Chapter 7 or 13 is better medicine for you. I could list literally dozens of possible ones. […]
Stopping the Foreclosure of Your Home Temporarily and Permanently through Bankruptcy
Both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 can help you save your home. Which one is better for YOU? You have almost for sure heard that the filing of a bankruptcy stops a foreclosure. You may have also heard that Chapter 13—the repayment version of bankruptcy—can be a good tool for saving your home in the […]
What IS the “S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index”?
I got curious—I’ve been hearing about this index for years without knowing what it’s actually measuring. So I dug a little and here’s what I found out. At 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time on the last Tuesday of every month, Standard & Poor’s Financial Services releases the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. It’s actually not a single […]
Chapter 13 Should Not (Sometimes) Be Used to Save Your House
Although Chapter 13 is often the go-to prescription for hanging onto a home in financial distress, like most strong medicine it comes with side-effects. The simpler Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” may be the better solution for both short-term relief and long-term financial health.
Buying Just Enough Time for Your Home with a Chapter 7 Straight Bankruptcy
What if you don’t want to keep your house, but just need a little more time to find another place to live? Or if you just need to finish a pending sale before a foreclosure happens? Or maybe you don’t want or need the extra benefits of Chapter 13. Or you just want to put […]