Ask The Money Coach

Archive for the ‘Foreclosure’ Category

A subscriber to AskTheMoneyCoach.com can’t afford their house. They want to know if a short sale or a deed in lieu of foreclosure will be less damaging to their credit than a full blown foreclosure?

The short answer is no, all three are equally damaging to your credit rating.  Click the link to this video on ABC News Now to find out why.

Gov’t Aims to Help More “Underwater” Homeowners (abcnews.go.com)

A subscriber wants to know if there is an upside to the current foreclosure crisis.  I appeared on MSNBC to discuss this topic. Click here to watch the video.

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My best advice is to keep very detailed records of all your transactions, conversations, payments and all correspondences with your lender. Sometimes, mortgage companies and banks will refuse partial payments. And rather than cash a check that they deem to be less than the full amount due, they’ll return the entire check. It sounds like something to that effect may have happened in your situation – at least with that roughly $3,000 payment they’re allegedly going to return. I noticed that the full amount of money in dispute — that $3,000, plus $2,400 that supposedly has not yet been applied – actually equals a little more than the $5,300 that they claim you owe.

I know it’s frustrating to get the run around and to not have clear answers. But I think you really do know (or should know) if you are in arrears or aren’t. You said you’re in foreclosure. And I assume that’s because you’re behind on your mortgage. Are you behind solely because of these disputed payments, or is there something else going on? If your payment delinquency is only due to these outstanding payments that you’ve made, but have not yet had credited to your account, then I would get some legal help in dealing with this matter. Reach out to a free legal aid clinic in your area, or turn to a reputable foreclosure prevention group for additional help. One good anti-foreclosure group is NeighborWorks (www.nw.org).

NeighborWorks is a national non-profit organization that employs a team of mediators to act as go-betweens for lenders and borrowers. NeighborWorks counselors often work out deals for homeowners. They also run the popular toll-free foreclosure prevention line: 888-995-HOPE.

A subscriber to Ask The Money Coach.com is contemplating bankruptcy and wants to know where to go to save her home from foreclosure. Click now to hear Lynnette’s answer.

Another high-profile celebrity athlete is facing foreclosure. This time it’s Plaxico Burress, the former New York Giants wide receiver best known for making the game-winning catch in the final minute of Super Bowl XLII – a spectacular feat that helped the Giants topple the New England Patriots. Unfortunately for Burress, the past two years have been spectacularly bad. He’s now being sued by Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. for $3.3 million for allegedly failing to pay the note on a palatial, waterfront home Burress bought in Lighthouse Point, Fla. for $4 million back in 2005. It’s perhaps little wonder that Burress is behind on his mortgage, considering he’s actually in prison stemming from a self-inflicted shooting about a year and a half ago. In November 2008, Burress was in a Manhattan nightclub with a gun hidden in his pants. That gun went off and shot him in the thigh, and the Giants later released Burress. After being charged with criminal possession of a weapon, Burress struck a plea deal to get a lesser charge and was sentenced to two years in prison. Read the rest of this article on AOL  Black Voices.