How much time do I have until the foreclosure or sheriff sale?
Hi welcome to day three of the of the Short Sale Your Home and Get Paid free internet test drive. Today we are going to be talking about how much time you have and how to find out how much time you have. This is a very important question that has probably drilled itself into your mind if you are in foreclosure. Many people at least if their state does judicial foreclosures will get a packet from their lenders attorney. They read the packet and they think they have to move out in 30 days. That’s very common from where I am (Cuyahoga County Ohio) because the packet will mention an answer must be filed with in 30 days and they think that means they have 30 days to move out before the house is sold.
If you’ve been in foreclosure for some time already you know that isn’t the case. The time between the date of the first foreclosure action is to the date you would actually be evicted from your home varies widely from state to state. It even varies significantly from county to county within the state.
Ordinarily it would take about 90 to 120 days from your first missed payment for the first foreclosure action by your lender. But this again varies widely from bank to bank. Currently foreclosure times will range from 6 months from the first missed payments to 18 months from the first missed payment.
It would be very rare to ever have your house go completely to foreclosure in less than 6 months from the very first day you miss your payment. A short sale typically take 90+ days from the time you start marketing to get the offer to actually getting acceptance of short sale from your lender and closing the sale. So if you figure that you have less than 90 days to do a short sale you’re going to have to use one of the delay tactics that I discuss in the next lesson.
Whether you’re selling or keeping your house you need to know how much time you have in your situation so that you can take informed action. Here’s how to find out how much time it takes to foreclose in your state.
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Find where the sheriff sales, trustee sales or foreclosure sales are listed in your area. Sometimes those are listed in the newspaper. Try Googling “cuyahoga county sheriff sale” or “san diego trustee sale.”
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Since my list had a case number I recorded the case numbers and the sale dates on two spread sheet columns for about 15 different listings. The more listings you research the more accurately you will understand the foreclosure time frame you are researching.
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You then need to find out where foreclosures are filed and look up the filing dates for each address. In a judicial foreclosure state you you could try google for “cuyahoga county clerk of courts” because the clerk of court keeps all the records for the common please court. If you are in a trust deeds state usually the there is a notice of default filed with the local recorders office. So you can search notice of default along with your city or county and / or recorders office along with your county. If all else fails call your local county office and ask where foreclosures are filed.
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Once you have researched the filing dates for all the addresses you can use the formulas feature to calculate the average times from foreclosure filing to foreclosure sale. I demonstrate how to do this in my actual free video tutorial and I discuss in detail how to interpret the results.
I want to deal with one of the questions today, how much time do you need in order to work a short sale? Short sales take a lot of time. Some times as long as six months. However it is always worth a try even if you only have a few days until foreclosure sale. I will explain more about that later.
Some people have also asked me can I do short sale even if the lender has started foreclosing on me. The answer to that question is, absolutely yes. A lot of people think that they can’t sell their home after they’ve been sued by their lender for foreclosure and so they just walk away and do nothing and let their home foreclose and be repossessed. The lender would be extremely happy to see you sell it and do a short sale as opposed to them having to take it back. In fact many lenders will not even allow you to do a short sale until you’re 90 days behind when they start foreclosing you anyways. So yes absolutely; lenders actually get more motivated when they start to foreclose on you.
Your homework for today is to go find out how much time it takes to foreclose in your area. I have a page that shows the times researched by HUD for foreclosures in different states but these times are changing all the time and they vary within the state so it may make sense for you to get a better idea exactly how much time it takes in your state and in your county to do a foreclosure. Go ahead and follow the process if you need to go back to the video that I just showed you and do that and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Post your foreclosure times on the comments section below. Thanks.
