For ten years, you’ve been making your monthly mortgage payments on time. It’s just part of your monthly budget and it’s never been a problem.
Then you missed a month. Maybe it just slipped your mind and you forgot to send it in. Maybe you had a tough month, financially speaking, and you couldn’t afford it. Either way, is the bank going to foreclose on the house now that you missed that payment? Can they even do so?
You did breach the agreement, but foreclosure is unlikely
Technically it doesn’t take any more than one missed check to breach the agreement you made with the lender when you bought your house. As soon as you break that agreement, they can foreclose on your home.
Will they? It’s very, very unlikely. People miss payments for a variety of reasons. They’ll probably just contact you and tell you about the oversight, asking you to pay as soon as you can. This gives you a chance to get caught back up and avoid foreclosure.
After all, the foreclosure process is long and complicated, and the bank doesn’t really want to take your home and then sell it. They’d much rather that you simply make your payments and continue to do so. Most of the time, it takes repeated missed payments to trigger a foreclosure, when the lender feels like they have no other option.
What if the mortgage company does foreclose?
If you continue to miss payments on your mortgage and the lender does decide to foreclose on the house, then it is time to look into all of the legal options you have. Bankruptcy may be able to help you keep your home.