Stop House Foreclosure The Day Before Your Sale Date

Surprisingly, in some states, you can stop house foreclosure up until the day before your house is sold at the sheriff’s sale. How can you do this? Many states have what is called a right to cure.

A right to cure is essentially a right to cure the loan. What does that mean? It means that you have the right to get the loan current with your bank. This means that you will need to pay all back payments, late fees, attorney’s fees and any other necessary fees to get the loan back in good standing with your bank. The twist in a right to cure is that you do not pay the money directly to the bank, you pay it to the government agency that recorded the deed for your house. In my case, this was the public trustee for the county that I live in. This is certainly a way to stop house foreclosure and can be a last resort effort to save you home. For me, simply filing the documents made me feel better.

So what do you need to file an intent to cure? You will need the proper paperwork. I had to get an Intent to Cure form from my county. The form itself was pretty simple. The only special pieces of information that I needed to look up to fill out the form was my foreclosure number, date that the deed of trust on my home was filed and recording number of the deed of trust. I found all of this information on the legal documents that my bank’s attorney’s sent to me. All I did after filling out the form was fax it to my county’s public trustee office. To stop house foreclosure this way, you will need to do some research to figure out what exactly you need and when you need to have it done by. For my county, I had to file an intent to cure at least 15 days before the scheduled sale date.

Filing an intent to cure does not mean that you definitely will cure the loan, simply that you intend to do so. I did not end up using this to stop house foreclosure in my situation but I was glad to know that it was an option. What I thought the great thing about this was that it gave me until noon on the day before the sale to come up with the money. Had I decided to use this option to stop house foreclosure, I could have gone to my county’s public trustee office by noon on the day before my foreclosure sale with a cashier’s check for the full amount to cure the loan and I could have saved my house that way.

This also might be a good option for you if you are having problems talking to your bank. In a way, this takes the bank out of it. For my county, the public trustee requested figures from the mortgage company and provided those numbers to me. If your bank will not talk to you about what it will take to reinstate your loan, they will be required by law to provide those figures to the government agency that filed your deed of trust.