Homeowner Crisis Counseling

Buying your home was one of the biggest investments you ever made. Now, due to a job loss, a sudden illness or other event beyond your control, you could lose your home. Facing foreclosure can be a stressful and complicated time with many unanswered questions. The Foreclosure Prevention Assistance Program is designed to help homeowners keep their home, establish financial stability, and learn strategies to avoid similar situations in the future. Housing and counseling organizations will walk you through the steps necessary to keep your home, including:

• In-depth financial counseling
• Debt management and repayment programs
• Access to community resources
• Working with your mortgage company
• Information about the foreclosure process

Below are some potential warning signs to consider before conducting business with services that claim to assist families facing foreclosure:

• The individual, enterprise or business entity offering assistance requests payment upfront for its services.
• The individual, enterprise or business entity offering assistance is not a HUD approved counseling agency.
• The individual, enterprise or business entity offering assistance is not a registered business entity with the Department of Commerce.
• The individual, enterprise or business entity offering assistance presents the win-win scenario of temporarily placing a family facing foreclosure into another home that is controlled by the individual, enterprise or business entity offering assistance.
• The individual, enterprise or business entity offering assistance do so without contracts or use contracts that are not state approved by the State Division of Real Estate.
• The individual, enterprise or business entity mandates that only companies and or affiliates of their companies are used at all times during the transaction.
• The individual, enterprise or business entity offering assistance tells you that recently they helped someone else on your street with the same problem. This is often how individuals, enterprises and business entities gain control of neighborhoods and fraudulently inflate market values for an entire neighborhood.

Although this is a vulnerable time mentally and physically for persons facing foreclosure, do your own due diligence. Check with the BBB, Department of Commerce, Division of Real Estate, and Consumer Protection to learn more about the persons or business entities that want to help you.

Developing an innovative process to support the relationship between local governments, nonprofits, lenders and homeowners, we strive to be a leader in helping prevent foreclosures by fostering responsible financial habits for people at risk of losing their homes.

Unfortunately there is no quick fix to the threat of foreclosure. You owe it to yourself to get the facts and remember if it sounds to good to be true it probably is. The longer you wait the fewer options you will have.

Call our Homeowner Crisis Counseling Resource Center and speak with a certified housing counselor today at 1-800-351-4195 for assistance.