Seller Received Notice of Acceleration - Not Sure of Next Steps

[Dominic Mauro]

Hi all, long story short, working with a seller on and off for a couple of months. She kind of ghosted and then popped back up when she received this letter re her property. This is in Texas, FYI.

The amount owed (about 70k) is more than the property is worth in current condition (about 50k) so just paying it off doesn’t really make sense. She isn’t super concerned about the actual foreclosure but would like to “keep it away from the bank”, even if it means some effort (but hard to gauge how much she will really put forth) with no real financial benefit. I have not dealt with much foreclosure stuff but she would like to sell and obviously I would like to purchase it at the right price. My thoughts are:

1. Would the next step (after 20 days I believe) from the lender be to start formal foreclosure (file with the county, etc)?

2. Based on what I have researched there doesn’t seem to be opportunity for negotiating a lower payoff or similar at this point or am I missing something?

3.Can the loan be brought current at this point or is it past that point? Honestly, I think her payments are too high for Sub2/wrap to make sense but just exploring all options.

4.She is active military so I believe she may be able to delay some? If so, is this process difficult? Is there any real opportunity for her to be able to negotiate a lower payoff through this avenue or would we just be kicking the can down the road a bit?

Thanks, I’m happy to offer more details, just wanted to keep it from getting too long!

[Greg H.]

This is the first step in the foreclosure process.  After the 20 days, they can post for foreclosure.  Since Texas only forecloses on the 1st Tuesday following the first Monday of the month,  the earliest possible date would be September but most likely October

Any short sale most likely rules out an investor as their will be an appraisal required.  When did she buy as it would be rare that an owner would be +-30% under water in today's market?

Her options to stop or postpone the foreclosure would be one of the programs set up by the government or bankruptcy