Tampa Loan Modification Attorneys

Helping Florida Homeowners Refinance Their Mortgage Agreements

Often, when faced with foreclosure, you will want to find a way to stay in your home. After all, many times the circumstances that resulted in foreclosure are beyond your control, and you wish to protect the home you have spent years making yours.

What Is a Mortgage Modification?

Mortgage modifications, or loan modifications, are one means through which you can keep your home despite a looming or ongoing foreclosure suit. The practice involves negotiating with your banking or lending institution to, as the name would imply, modify the terms of your mortgage.

A successful loan modification can result in you reducing the amount of your monthly payment installments and avoid going through foreclosure. A successful modification not only allows you to keep your home, it strategically positions you to sustainably manage your mortgage in the long-term.

This helps justify why banks and other lending institutions entertain the mechanism. While they are consequently not receiving the full balance of the original mortgage, a loan modification allows banks to limit their losses in a potential default situation. Foreclosures, after all, are expensive endeavors, and banks generally prefer to avoid the procedure and its consequences as much as you do.

How Our Tampa Loan Modification Lawyers Can Help

Successfully negotiating a loan modification agreement is generally not a simple task, however, even if a bank is willing to negotiate. You also are not automatically eligible for one and will need to determine if your mortgage qualifies.

Mistakes can be costly, which is why you need the services our Tampa loan modification lawyers. We can represent you in every stage of your modification and work to get you the most advantageous agreement possible.

Call (813) 683-8688 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation with our Tampa loan modification lawyers today.

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Who Qualifies for a Mortgage Modification?

The state of Florida has specific regulations governing when a mortgage modification can be pursued. You will have to prove each piece of the 5-part criteria in order to qualify.

First, you will need to prove that you are experiencing hardship. To do this, you will need to provide a convincing letter (also known as an affidavit) outlining the details of the hardship and how it is negatively impacting your ability to pay your existing mortgage agreement.

The affidavit should also include an explanation on what steps you have taken to circumvent the financial challenges and how they were insufficient in preventing your current predicament, leaving you no choice but to ask for the modification.

In terms of mortgage modifications, valid hardships can include:

  • Serious illness
  • Increase in other expenses
  • Death of a close family member or cosigner on the loan in question
  • Loss or reduction of income that supports the mortgage
  • Substantial change in your household’s overall financial situation (such as a spouse’s loss of income)
  • Recent or anticipated increase in mortgage payments
  • Military service
  • Divorce
  • Inability to pay both the mortgage and basic necessities
  • Overextension with creditors to keep up with mortgage

Second, you must demonstrate that you have sufficient, reliable income to continue paying your modified mortgage. Banks and other lending institutions agree to these sorts of agreements because they would rather have something than nothing, especially in situations where the market has reduced the value of the home.

Still, you must provide evidence that you can actually pay for what is being proposed. That generally means you will be providing tax documentation and thorough financial records to validate the situation outlined in your affidavit and prove you can no longer pay your current mortgage.

Third, you must establish a substantial decline in the value of your home or property. This will generally require hiring the services of an appraiser to assess and confirm the current property value and comparing the result with the value of the home when you originally closed.

Some reasons your home’s value might decrease include:

  • Rising mortgage interest rates limits mortgage affordability among new buyers in a community, making your property more difficult to sell
  • Foreclosures and short sales in your immediate communities skew area property values downward
  • Natural disasters can dramatically impact area communities, especially when changing weather patterns make systems like tornadoes or hurricanes more frequent

Get the relief you need through a loan modification. Let us help determine if you qualify by calling (813) 683-8688 or contacting us online.

Fourth, you must show that your loan amount exceeds the current property value. This will establish the potential necessity of a mortgage modification, as you will have no equity in the home. In an ideal scenario, your modification will bring your updated mortgage in line with what the home is presently worth.

Fifth and finally, you must have a recent history of late or missed mortgage payments. You cannot get a loan modification if you are still able to pay your original mortgage. You also cannot request a loan modification before you actually begin to miss payments.

If you know you are about to be hit with huge medical bills that will consume much of your income, for example, you unfortunately cannot seek a mortgage modification until one or more payments is late or missed entirely. This may seem counterintuitive, but it is a feature of the system attempting to curb abuse by those simply seeking to avoid honoring the original mortgage.

Once you meet all 5 of the above conditions, you can submit your affidavit of hardship, which can be done even if foreclosure proceedings have already begun against your property. This typically begins negotiations with your bank or lending institution.

Remember, loan modifications require cooperation with your financial institution. If they refuse to negotiate and you are determined not to lose your home, note that filing for either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy will issue an automatic stay that halts foreclosure proceedings.

You could still lose your home in Chapter 7 liquidation, but you will have an opportunity to repay a portion of your mortgage in Chapter 13 reorganization. Our experienced Tampa loan modification attorneys can help negotiate with your financial institution and explore alternative options should they refuse to cooperate.

What Can a Mortgage Modification Accomplish?

The main goal of any mortgage modification is to save your home and adjust the loan’s monetary terms to figures you can continue to pay sustainability. In other words, a successful loan modification will be advantageous to both you and your financial institution, as it allows the financial relationship to continue long-term without going through the expensive and resource-consuming foreclosure process.

Our Tampa loan modification lawyers can help renegotiate many elements of your mortgage, including:

  • Reducing the principle balance
  • Reducing the amount of your monthly installment payments
  • Lowering the interest rate
  • Reducing or eliminating late fees
  • Extending the amount of time to repay

Hire Successful Loan Modification Negotiators

At Cremeens Law Group PLLC, we have a proven history of helping our Florida clients keep their homes through successful mortgage loan modifications. Our team is made up of accomplished negotiators who understand how to communicate with banks and other financial institutions and how to best advocate for the needs of our clients.

Should you retain our services, we can evaluate the details of your situation, determine if you qualify for a loan modification, assist in drafting your hardship affidavit, and work to achieve a favorable result with your lending institution. We are empathetic to what is at stake and will do everything possible to help you keep your home.

If you are already facing foreclosure proceedings, do not wait to get in touch with us. We can help explore loan modifications and other means of saving your home. Call (813) 683-8688 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation.

Taking the Burden Off of Your Shoulders

What You Can Expect With Us
  • Experience

    Having worked with both consumers and lenders, we have unique insight for how banks work, providing you with the best strategy.

  • Results

    If you hire us, we will be the attorneys that keep you in your home.

  • Affordability

    With payment plans available and without any hidden or extra fees, our goal is to help you budget when you're dealing with financial issues.

  • Communication

    You will never be kept in the dark. From start to finish, we maintain regular communication about your case.

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