The process varies by state. If you apply for a forbearance by the deadline, which is currently the end of September of this year, the lender won’t be able to foreclose on you while you are in a forbearance plan. However, if people don’t act, that could start the clock running on the foreclosure. In Maryland, the foreclosure process takes about four to six months, depending on whether the homeowner still lives in the property and whether they’ve requested a mediation. Foreclosure is not a process where you miss your payment and then are out of your house the next day. There are some things that have to happen, and there are ways to stop that process by filing bankruptcy or, in some cases, applying for assistance. Homeowners who’ve applied for assistance in a timely manner have some protection in place, and their foreclosure process can be put on hold. Do Banks Want To Put Delinquent Homeowners In Foreclosure At The Moment? I’ve stopped trying to figure out what banks want to do because they never seem to apply the same logic. In many instances,…Read More
The eviction moratorium has not expired. The CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky signed an order dated August 3, 2021, determining that eviction of tenants for failure to pay rent or housing payments could be detrimental to public health control measures to slow the spread of SARS COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. That order expires on October 3, 2021, and applies to United States counties experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission levels of SARS COV-2. What that means is that the moratorium is not everywhere. In some counties around this country, those that have lower amounts of transmission of this virus, landlords may be able to evict tenants at this time. But in areas like Florida and Texas (at least in parts of those states), they will probably have this moratorium in place till October 3, at the very least (the order could be extended). I know there have been some legal challenges to this that are currently in the courts. Some are arguing that this moratorium is unconstitutional. It will be interesting to see how those cases play out. Was The Moratorium…Read More
The first form of relief is to do a refinance. If it’s a private student loan, it can sometimes be refinanced to get a lower interest rate. There is also deferment and forbearance, two programs that allow you to pause your payments for a certain period of time. In deferment, no interest accrues during the time that you are not paying, whereas with forbearance, the interest continues to build on the loan. You’ll end up owing more in a forbearance situation than you would have had you deferred the loan, and there are different requirements for being able to do either of those. There are also different kinds of income-driven repayment plans. Essentially, the program you would qualify for depends on what kind of loan you have, but typically, you pay a percentage of your discretionary income into a plan for a period lasting between 20 to 25 years. After that period of time, if you’ve made all of your payments, the debt is forgiven. Some borrowers in certain professions might be eligible for public service loan forgiveness. If they make ten years of payments…Read More
The U.S. student loan debt is characterized as a debt crisis in this country. Currently, about 45 million Americans hold more than $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. Of that, about 92% is backed by the American taxpayers. Cumulative student loan debt is the second largest category of consumer debt after mortgages, which struck me as being pretty crazy. While tuition is what we normally think of with student loan debt, there’s also the cost of other things that students need, such as housing, food, books, and supplies, and all of those things go up in price every year, which contributes to the problem. It’s not a simple issue, but there is some movement to try to fix some of the problem. Because it’s impossible for people to escape student loan debt in most cases, the lenders that offer the student loans have little motivation to assess the creditworthiness of the people that they lend to. In other words, the lenders don’t need to underwrite these loans as they would if they were assessing someone for a mortgage, for example, where they would look at…Read More