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Tips to help you avoid foreclosure in Seattle

By Connie Bolin

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 13Sep2008 Word count: 619 Viewed: 264 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Seattle in Washington is the biggest city in the whole of Pacific Northwest. Located between Lake Washington and Puget Sound, Seattle is nicknamed as The Emerald City. The city is one of the greenest cities in the US, with a large quantity of trees, fantastic views of the Olympic Mountains to the west and the Cascade Mountains to the east. Seattle is famous for hosting Microsoft, Amazon.com, the Space Needle, Nordstrom, Costco, Nintendo of America, and Starbucks, in addition to the University of Washington. Seattle is also the home of a vibrant arts scene and an excellent park system.

It is great to have a home in this friendly and beautiful city. But if you are entangled in a legal situation, and awaiting a foreclosure, you may find yourself feeling a bit desperate and stressed. In this article, we discuss ways of how to avoid foreclosure.

Let us assume you have taken out a home loan, and bought a house and your lender took a security interest in the property. After that, for some reasons or the other, you are unable to pay the mortgage. Now, the lender has the right to foreclose, that is, auction your house off and keep the amount in order to recover his/ her investment. But do not look so troubled, there are ways to avoid this dire situation:

1) Do not overlook the problem. Never ignore the problem, the further behind you fall on your payments; the harder it will be for you to restore the loan and the more likely that you will lose your residence.

2) Pay heed to all the mail you receive from your lender. The first of the notices you receive will probably offer excellent information about foreclosure prevention schemes that can help you ride out financial problems. And shortly mail will follow which may include significant notice of awaiting legal action. Your failure to read your mail will not be granted as an excuse. 3) Contact your lender the moment you understand that you might have a problem. Lenders do not want to trouble you unnecessarily, nor do they want your house. They always have options to help borrowers get through difficult monetary times.

4) Know well your mortgage rights. Find the loan documents and go through them so you are well aware what your lender might do if you can not make your payments in time. Learn about the laws of foreclosure and time frames in Washington by contacting the Government Housing Office.

5) Prioritize your spending. Right after health care, your first priority should be keeping your house. Evaluate your finances and work out where you can cut down on spending so as to pay your mortgage in time. Look for optional expenses like club memberships, cable TV, etc that you can easily eliminate.

6) In case of emergency, Use your assets. Do you have assets like a second car, jewelry, a whole life insurance policy, that you can sell off for cash to help restore your loan? Can you or anyone in your family get an extra job to chip in with some extra income? Even if these efforts do not increase your available cash significantly, they send a positive message to your lender that you are willing to make sacrifices to keep your home.

Apart from these tips, the State Government is also taking adequate steps through various government programs and city programs to aid individuals and families facing foreclosure. Search the internet and see what programs are available that you may qualify for.

Remember the worse thing you can do when facing foreclosure, is to do nothing at all. Get involved, do your research and work to save your hard earned investment.

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