Mortgage issues

Published on: May 2, 2020

How to Correct Your Credit Reports When Your Mortgage Payments are Not Reported Post Bankruptcy Discharge

It can be risky to reaffirm a mortgage in a bankruptcy, particularly when the property is underwater (worth less than what is owed), or you may need to move and sell quickly. A reaffirmation agreement puts you back on the hook to pay for the full amount of the mortgage, including interest, taxes, insurance, foreclosure fees and costs after a bankruptcy, if you elect to keep the home. Why would someone ever sign one of these? Well, most mortgage companies do not report payments being made on a non-reaffirmed mortgage. So how do you avoid the risk, while at the same time, benefit from timely payments being made which rebuilds credit?

SELF REPORTING MORTGAGE PAYMENTS

WHEN YOUR LOAN WAS NOT REAFFIRMED

The bankruptcy code does not require that you reaffirm, or sign a court order agreeing to continue the payments on your mortgage. But unless you are surrendering your house, you will want to continue paying because the house will eventually be foreclosed if you do not.

Mortgage companies will not report your payments to the three major credit reporting agencies (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax) if you have not reaffirmed. It is possible, nonetheless, to still get your payment history included in your credit report, as follows:

Request a payment history from the mortgage company. (The mortgage company is required by law to provide one every year free of charge.) There is no special form – just call your mortgage company and be persistent.
File a dispute with the three credit reporting agencies, attaching a copy of the payment history.
The credit reporting agency is required to verify the accuracy of the debt with the mortgage company within 30 days.
At that point, the mortgage company can either:

Remain silent – the credit reporting agency must accept the information you provided; or
Accurately report information. The mortgage company would be hard pressed to explain how a payment history it prepared was inaccurate.
Repeat this process on a regular basis, to update the information.

Additionally, you should keep the payment history, since that can be provided to anyone you’re applying to for new credit.

Published on: March 27, 2020

Why the Tampa Bay Real Estate Market Will Outlast COVID-19:

By Christie D. Arkovich, P.A.

Any hit to the real estate market in Tampa Bay is likely short-lived because of several factors:

We still have an inventory shortage.
Interest rates are at an all-time low.

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Published on: March 23, 2020

Out of a Job due to COVID-19 and Need to Make a Mortgage Payment?

By Christie D. Arkovich, P.A.

How do I make my mortgage payments for the next three months?

When people asked and learned that I am able to work from home, they are a little envious. What they don’t understand is that one cannot “work from home” indefinitely. At some point, there will be no work to work from home. There will be no new clients, no new orders, and the pipeline of work will stop. Hourly workers, contract workers, and salaried workers alike are on the same boat; our income will be greatly reduced or terminated altogether. While some of us have savings, few have sufficient savings to last us several months and our housing expense will be first and foremost on our list of concerns. If you have lost income due to COVID-19, there are things you can do to qualify for relief from your mortgage payments.

Federal regulators, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are ordering lenders to offer flexibility to homeowners; about one half of the home loans in the country, those guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie, will be affected by this policy. However, the entire mortgage industry is expected to follow suit. Forbearance from mortgage payments could last up to 12 months, depending on the borrower’s particular situation, according to Mark Calabria, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. While this type of relief is neither debt forgiveness or free money, it will keep you from falling into the trap of default and foreclosure.

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