Are you unable to pay your mortgage because you can’t afford the payments, or because you’ve gotten behind on them and cannot afford to make them up while paying your mortgage? If so, a loan modification can be the answer to your mortgage payment problems, and it might be the only way to save your home.
However, as real estate values rise quickly and substantially here in the Bay Area, loan modifications become harder to get. A lender will almost never even consider you for a loan modification if your house is worth a lot more than you owe on it, and some lenders won’t consider you for one if your house is worth any more than you owe. Therefore, if you are having trouble paying your mortgage and need those payments lowered, you should try to modify your mortgage loan now before the value of your home rises too much for you to be considered for a loan modification.
Our bankruptcy court in the Northern District of California, which includes Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo Counties, has a loan modification program for people in chapter 13 bankruptcy. This loan modification program is overseen by the bankruptcy court, so that lenders cannot get away with doing things like saying that they did not receive documents that you have already sent them, which happens in almost every loan modification attempt.
Even more important, this program has a much higher success rate than the rate for people who try loan modifications on their own. Applying for a loan modification in this program does not guarantee that you will get one — each case is different and these decisions are made individually — but it certainly increases your chances by quite a bit over the low success rate of people who try loan modifications on their own.
If you cannot afford your mortgage but want to save your home, contact a bankruptcy attorney today to ask about whether this loan modification program is right for you.