What Can Happen When Your Lender Sells Your Home
Its a sad but true fact that all around the world, right now, as we speak, families are loosing their homes in record numbers. Mortgage foreclosures are the highest they have been since the great depression, or perhaps they are even worse if we consider the amount of people and families that have been dispossessed from their homes.
We have seen many instances where a lender has insured the mortgage in the event that if the loan goes into default, the lender would be covered against all losses that could occur. When a property has loads of equity available, the outcomes are not always as bad for the home owner, but what happens when the home has plenty of equity and the sale of that home still manages to achieve losses just short of two hundred thousand dollars?
It sounds impossible, right? Well think again. Many of us think that the credit crunch has really impacted the United States the worst, but it has had far greater impacts all around the world.
In a modern suburb of Sydney Australia, we read of reports of FirstMac taking possession of a home, that had been earlier valued at six hundred and ninety thousand dollars, to be sold three years later for four hundred and fifty two thousand dollars. Sounds unbelievable right? Well its a true story and its going on everyday all around the world.
Why would a lender willingly let a property sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars less then what was owed to them? Two words folks – Mortgage Insurance, or more specifically, lenders mortgage insurance.
In Australia, most mortgages are insured and this is purely to protect the lender, just in case anything goes wrong. When financial times are great, not many people give a second thought to mortgage insurance and what could happen if things go wrong.
So getting back to the example in this story, FirstMac had Lenders Mortgage Insurance for the loan they had lent to the home owner. There are only three mortgage insurance firms in Australia, being PMI, GE and Genworth Financial Mortgage Insurance and its the borrower who pay’s the mortgage insurance premium for the bank. Its important to note that the borrower is not covered in any way.
So when FirstMac received the default judgement from the NSW Supreme Court, it gave them the right to sell them home. The only problem was, it took over six months for the home to be put on the market. This caused a problem for the home owners, because the monthly interest was compounding on a monthly basis, so whatever equity was left was soon eaten up by the compounding interest on the loan.
So once the home foreclosure was complete and the home eventually was sold for thousands of dollars under its current market value, FirstMac had one job left to do, which was to make an insurance claim to cover their shortfall loss of one hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars, making the result non impacting for this lender.
Genworth and companies like them, are faced with this kind of short fall loss ever day. One a good day, they make be able to make a settlement with the old home owners, but the normally sequence of events see’s these families forced into bankrupcy.
What can you learn from this true story? Well, if you are finding it difficult to stay on top of your mortgage payments, make sure you do everything within your power to sell your home before your lender sells it for you. If you find there is going to be a shortfall loss at closing time, you can ask the mortgage insurer to help cover the gap, and enter into a payment arrangement with them.
Doing this will make the losses much smaller and you may find yourself avoiding bankruptcy in the process.