Three foreclosure prevention strategies help struggling property owners stall or avoid foreclosure. Whether you or someone you know is facing foreclosure, please understand your options and seek qualified advice.

To start, consider free help available locally and through the government. Contact HOPE NOW immediately to see if you or someone you know qualifies for help: 888.995.HOPE. Hope Now, a coalition of lenders, have come together to work out mortgages & keep families in their homes.

Clearly, homeowners benefit from foreclosure prevention help. However, it’s not just home owners who benefit from foreclosure prevention. Debt owners such as banks benefit from keeping homeowners in their homes.

A foreclosure typically costs a bank 30% more than a short sale. In my own Sarasota, Florida, neighborhood, 7 abandoned houses continue rotting away, destroying the value of each property in addition to all the houses in the neighborhood.

One such property has been stripped, with “someone:”

1. Removing all appliances

2. Removing all upper and lower cabinets in kitchen and bathrooms

3. Removing all copper piping through walls

4. Flooding the house (and destroying all wood flooring and carpet with pool water drained into the house.

By the way, windows are broken…and maybe that’s a slight blessing in disguise.

The once nice PVC fence is gone along with the air conditioning compressor.

By the time, the bank repossesses this property, the debt owner will acquire a liability worth one-third its previous value or minimum $100,000 since the house has been abandoned. Of course, I didn’t mention mold.

For 18 months, this Florida house has had no ventilation…no AC at all. The cost of foreclosure extends beyond the debt owner’s loss to all neighboring properties. The entire community suffers with foreclosure.

If Hope Now doesn’t work for you, immediately implement strategy #2-call the National Association of Consumer Advocates @ www.naca.net. NACA is a group of consumer attorneys SPECIALIZING in foreclosure defense. It’s been my experience that NACA attorneys specialize in foreclosure defense more so than local attorneys who only recently have turned their law practices into foreclosure defense to accommodate demand. Nonetheless, search your local area for experienced, proven attorneys specializing in foreclosure defense. In the last 8 months, I have discovered 3 very qualified attorneys in my local area. Very few attorneys specialized in foreclosure defense prior to 2007. The “good” attorneys are those who have invested time, money & energy to become proven advocates.

Strategy #3 calls for you (preferably your attorney) demanding your debt owner produce the “original note.” This strategy alone currently is delaying a foreclosure for months longer than normal in judicial foreclosure states such as Florida. Florida is a judicial foreclosure state, meaning a foreclosure must go through the courts. Courts in my area are so jammed foreclosure proceedings are taking months longer than normal. It’s not unheard of for a debt owner to take 18-36 months to foreclose. The other day, I oversaw a cash-for-keys exchange, where the homeowner volunteered the keys in exchange for cash.

She agreed to leave the house in broom-clean condition.

She had been living in the house rent free since July 2008.

Sarasota foreclosures dot nearly every neighborhood in Sarasota, hammering all other home owners’ property values. Foreclosures cost everyone, including the neighbors. These 3 strategies offer a glimpse of the help available to you or someone you know for avoiding foreclosure. If you and your qualified counsel determine short selling your house is in your best interest and you are in the Sarasota (FL) area, please call me now. I will short sell your property for you…at no cost to you. Should you qualify for a short sale, the bank pays me to short sell your property.

Author Bio: Sarasota Realtor Mike helps homeowners avoid foreclosure. Mike and his team also help buyers and sellers avoid costly mistakes as property values drop and 30-50% off 2006 “bubble” prices are not the bargains they appear to be. Contact me now at 941-914-9980 or Sarasota Real Estate | Sarasota Foreclosures

Category: Real Estate
Keywords: sarasota,foreclosures,realtor,homes,real estate,condos