Explanation Of Foreclosure

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By Danny Thomas

When a person has a mortgage on a home and can no longer make payments for one reason or another, often the result is foreclosure. Foreclosure is when the bank or company that offered the mortgage on the home takes the home away from the mortgage holder because of their inability to make payments.

For the average person who isn't a real estate agent or mortgage officer, foreclosures can be difficult to navigate and understand. There seems to be so many foreign terms associated with the concept that it can leave most of us feeling like we are in the dark. It is easy to get confused when foreclosure related terms are used.

It would be helpful for people to understand a few terms associated with foreclosure. This will help us all feel more educated and more capable of carrying on a conversation about it when necessary. You will almost always hear the term lien holder when talking about foreclosure. Simply put, the lien holder is the bank, credit union, or financial institution that issued the mortgage. Technically, until you pay off the mortgage on a home, the lien holder has most of the power.

If a borrower starts to fail to make payments on their mortgage, the lender might choose to accelerate the loan. This can be done because most of the mortgages these days have acceleration clauses in them. This is another term that is helpful to understand. Without an acceleration clause, a lien holder would have to wait until payments were due and then declare the payments were defaulted.

If you are behind on payments, and there is an acceleration clause in your mortgage, the lien holder can decide to accelerate your mortgage and require you pay the full amount or the home will be foreclosed. If there weren't an acceleration clause, technically if you failed to make payments, the mortgage holder could really only hold you accountable for what you haven't paid, not the full amount you owe on the home. They would have to wait until payments became due.

Default is another term often associated with foreclosure. Default refers to the lack of payments on time and in full to the mortgage. This means that the borrower failed to stick to the terms and conditions of the loan and therefore defaulted on their payments and the loan. Default often leads to foreclosure of the home.

When it comes to foreclosure, there are a lot of details to try to take in. Understanding these few basic terms will help you make foreclosures just a little less foreign.

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